This coupling is as familiar as salt and pepper, yet there is always room for new and revelatory accounts. Jean-Bernard Pommier's playing is not without its attractive features and his very French brightness and articulacy are a refreshing change from the stormy approximations we so often hear. Yet it is hard to locate new insights in his deft but sadly under-powered readings. The Tchaikovsky is hardly ''the greatest of all battles for piano and orchestra'', the famous fusillade of octaves sturdy rather than electrifying, the start of the cadenza almost apologetic, the Andante's central Prestissimo a neat but characterless alternative to a ''scherzo of fireflies''. The finale is brisk and springy but there is too little bite or con fuoco, too little sense of Tchaikovsky's brutal Ukrainian dance.
Again, in the Rachmaninov terms such a piu vivo mean too little and the Andante is as becalmed as Coleridge's poor Ancient Mariner. The recordings lack brilliance and, overall, both soloist and orchestra seem happy to plough only the most conventional of furrows. There are innumerable more vital and colourful recordings, most notably from Sviatoslav Richter in the Rachmaninov and Martha Argerich in the Tchaikovsky (her live, helter-skelter account on Philips, 1/84 is deleted), while Van Cliburn's coupling of both is an impressive reminder of his former romantic glory.'