The Rhapsody kicks off at a real allegro vivace, full of intent and purpose but with less sense of an Introduction than the more deliberate tempo of the composer (in 1941) and most others. By journey’s end, Sudbin’s overall timing of 23'07" (exactly the same as Rubinstein’s 1956 version, with its wittiest of all endings) is a minute slower than Rachmaninov’s. It seems much longer. Don’t mistake me. This, as you would expect from Sudbin, is a performance rich in detail and immaculately executed; furthermore, from the outset the ear is immediately taken by the superb sound quality (Thore Brinkman): hear how the gratifying woodwind writing in Vars 2, 4, 7 et seq is subtly focused. But overall it does not hang together quite as successfully as Moiseiwitsch (outstanding in 1938), Byron Janis (live in 1968) or Yuja Wang (2011). Sudbin strives far too hard for effect in the solo writing of Var 18 – and give me Rachmaninov’s ardent, swooning Philadelphia strings any day – while the final four variations sound anxious and fretful instead of cocksure and debonair.

What a good idea to follow this not with another concerto but with the work which Rachmaninov wrote directly after the Paganini Rhapsody, the only one of his three symphonies he himself recorded (albeit without the repeat of the Allegro moderato’s exposition). Lan Shui and his Singaporean players play their hearts out, without matching the intensity of the composer’s 1939 account of the finale, and bring an apt autumnal glow to the lovely second movement in BIS’s ideal acoustic.