The Canadian pianist Hélène Mercier has appeared in these pages on and off for more than 20 years, always in partnership with another musician (most notably Cyprien Katsaris and Louis Lortie) and always eliciting enthusiastic reviews. You can see why. She has a chameleon-like ability to blend, spar or float in and out of focus as the need arises. Lortie and she have been playing together since their early teens in Montrea. They have previously recorded two-piano and four-hand works for Chandos by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Poulenc and Ravel, so the three major works for the medium by Rachmaninov were obvious choices.

Lortie and Mercier’s choice of instruments was perhaps not so obvious: two identical (and very lively) Faziolis which, as recorded at Potton Hall, allow one to hear the inner workings of these busy scores in crisp detail and bright, resonant colours. The non-stop triplets and semiquavers of ‘Barcarolle’ in Suite No 1 are somewhat relentless and some may wish for a more mellow tone at times (I confess I found the end of ‘Pâques’ just a bit too bell-like), but for rhythmic verve and precision ensemble, this is Rachmaninov-playing that is hard to resist. The latter (agitato) section of ‘La nuit…l’amour’ (Op 5) and the Valse from Op 17 in particular are tremendous. However, Argerich and Freire (Philips/Decca, 10/83, 2/84) show them a clean pair of heels in the concluding Tarantelle – 5'17" as against Lortie and Mercier’s 6'26" – as they do with all the best rival versions (Ashkenazy and Previn, Donohoe and Roscoe).

The sonorous Faziolis come into their own most effectively in the Symphonic Dances, while the formidable Canadian duo are especially fine in the fluent waltz sections of the second movement in which Rachmaninov, amid all the self-quotes, seems to be looking back to Arensky and the world of his youth. Incidentally, this is the first recording I can recall in which the page turners for the recording sessions are given namechecks in the booklet.