An 18-year-old Chinese pianist, Wen-Yu Shen, strides into the limelight with a début disc of dazzling assurance and poetic conviction. A second-prize winner in the 2003 Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels, he commands your attention in every scintillating and supercharged bar. Indeed, so complete is his mastery of Rachmaninov’s torrid Second Sonata that he almost makes you forget the greatly preferable 1913 version where the composer’s love of sequence, of his nerve-stretching climb from one peak to another, is maintained rather than brutally sabotaged. Flamboyant yet tautly disciplined, Wen-Yu Shen more than makes his mark, even faced with such front-runners as Horowitz, Ashkenazy and most of all Van Cliburn – a classic instance of his early glory which last appeared in Philips’ Great Pianists of the 20th Century series (1/99).

Shen’s way with the D major Etude-tableau’s embattled cry is fine-toned, lithe and athletic and he leaves a memorable impression in Stravinsky, creating a notably poignant effect in ‘Petrushka’s cell’ and coming into the final stretch of ‘The shrove-tide fair’ (starting at the tempo giusto) with a resource more vital and focused than the majority of performances in the catalogue. So while one may forever regret the absence of a recording by Artur Rubinstein (the music’s dedicatee), that incomparable virtuoso would surely have been among the first to acclaim Shen’s triumph.

The sound is brilliant and spacious. One can only hope that such a phenomenally gifted young pianist may be allowed to follow a natural rather than an artificially inflated career.