Make no mistake, this is a classy release. Hardly surprising that, given the artists involved, but I headline the cliché because I shall be expressing a number of reservations, and I don’t want them to loom disproportionately large. Put it this way: anyone drawing up a canon of the finest recordings of the Rachmaninov concertos would be thought odd if they did not include this latest bid.

The First Concerto strikes me as especially fine. Alongside Wang’s signature fiery attack and uber-clarity at supersonic tempos, her phrasing is spacious and shapely, the broader ebb and flow always persuasive. Her tremendous power is all the more effective for being kept in reserve and released in long waves as well as momentary darts and quivers. Cadenzas and interludes are by turns dreamy and drastic, the climaxes generous and perfectly placed, never degenerating into a shouting match. The slow movement is nicely improvisatory, never self-gratifyingly wayward. Dudamel has plenty of great ideas for his players to show their mettle but also their heart and individuality, and Wang opens plenty of windows in the texture for them to shine through. A couple of days before listening, I chanced on a radio broadcast of Earl Wild with the RPO and Horenstein (RCA, 10/80), which would surely be many listeners’ idea of a classic version. In all the above terms, Wang and Dudamel are streets ahead: admittedly not quite on a level with Janis/Kondrashin (Mercury, 12/62), whose fusion of rhetoric and vision is even more extraordinary, but arguably in the same league.

Curiously, No 1 is not placed first on the CD. That honour goes to the Second Concerto, which is where I began listening. Here I confess my heart sank a little as the famous opening chords took an age to crank up. Was this going to be a performance disfigured by attention-seeking idiosyncrasy? Well, no, thank goodness. But it was a while before I could warm to it. One reason for that may not be any fault in the playing, which displays as much tigerish relish and idiomatic languor as in the First Concerto, but rather with a recorded balance that places the piano conspicuously to the fore. Given that clarity is one of Wang’s trump cards, the choice is understandable. Rachmaninov’s piano-writing teems with inventive detail that is frequently lost in the concert hall, or only preserved at the expense of taming the orchestra, and it would seem churlish to complain when that detail is brought out and savoured. Not only that, but some discreet boosting is justifiable – indeed routine – simply to compensate for what the eye tells the ear in live performance. My problem is that Rachmaninov’s orchestral writing is as structurally load bearing as it is ornamental, and even when that is not the case, its dialogue with the piano here goes for less than it might.

When the orchestra can get a word in edgeways, as in the Second Concerto’s slow movement, the playing is of real distinction, caressed and cajoled into loving shapes by Dudamel. But in the embedded scherzo, where the piano should be consorting rather than dominating, there are places where the orchestra might as well have been miming. When piano and orchestra come separately to centre stage, as at the opening of the finale, Dudamel’s razor-sharp phrasing and Wang’s athleticism alternate to thrilling effect. At such moments I willingly surrender to the sheer combustion generated. But another part of me has to acknowledge the critiques that sometimes come Wang’s way: that taking virtuoso warhorses by storm is well and good, but a little more persuasion and reticence along the way might make the passion even more uplifting in the long run. Her sheer velocity can seem driven more by ego than any deeper identification with the music, and the same goes, at least some of the time, for passages of lyrical reflection, where I crave a little more sympathy, a little less domination, with a view to emerging a little less bruised, a little more cherished.

In the big dramatic paragraphs of No 3, no barn remains unstormed, no bodice unripped. Occasionally Wang still seems determined to nail the piece to the floor rather than enabling it to take wing, and once again, there are passages in all three movements where the orchestra might as well not be there. All the same, it would be unfair to categorise her as a mere Rambo-style heavy-hitter (easy for piano buffs to enter names here, though we might not always be in agreement). One of the things that makes her playing so compelling is her ability to shape and voice textures where others would be at their wits’ end in coping with the sheer tumult. For the first-movement cadenza she opts for the smaller original version, and it darts, ducks and dives splendidly. Still, I could not but think that the bigger, revised cadenza would have been more commensurate with the scale of the rest of the performance. She sprints into the finale as if determined to break the world speed record, as a consequence finding less room to appreciate the view than others, and with rather less orchestral detail thanks to the balance. The slower central variations are distinguished, and the coruscations of the toccata-like one out of this world. Overall, this a tremendously impressive account, but not one I would necessarily commend to musician friends without a prior health warning.

The Fourth Concerto makes a rather march-like entrance, but there is an abundance of poetry thereafter, along with sparkle and caprice. The finale I find energetic and steely almost to a fault, and here and elsewhere I wondered whether the bright-toned instrument had been selected with an ear more towards domination than collaboration. Occasionally, as in all the performances, I felt that an inner part was being spotlit just for the hell of it; but why not, if that’s what the moment dictated?

The difference shows up especially by comparison with Abduraimov in the Paganini Rhapsody (Sony, 5/20), whose voicing of the texture is witty and devilishly perceptive. Still, I have nothing but admiration for Wang and Dudamel’s pacing, their characterisation and clarity, their overall balance between drive and flexibility. Hear Wang’s poise and grace in the treacherous 15th variation and tell me this isn’t an outstanding artist at the top of her game. The famous 18th is pulled around, but not so far as to be mangled out of shape, and when the orchestra gets hold of it, the shaping is moulded, but not self-consciously so, at least in my book. Even so, there are other places where the orchestral contribution is once again reduced almost to a sideshow, and I’m far from convinced that this is how the performance would have been heard live.

Overall, then, I’m sure I shall return to these performances, if only to remind myself of what is pianistically possible: that in certain passages even Janis can be out-Janis ed (in No 1), even Richter out-Richter ed (No 2), even Argerich out-Argerich ed (No 3) and even Michelangeli out-Michelangeli ed (No 4). But for the deepest satisfaction that kind of competitiveness isn’t the point, or shouldn’t be. Meanwhile, the composer’s own recordings are peerless as far as la grande ligne is concerned. There is a reason why all the above are still hailed as classics, why Abduraimov on Rachmaninov’s own piano may one day be so in the Paganini Rhapsody, and why Wang and Dudamel will need to be debated, re-heard and re-debated before such status is conferred.