The two bits of bread and butter in this musical sandwich are Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto and Franck’s Variations symphoniques. Thomas Carroll, the Orpheus Sinfonia’s artistic director and conductor, has a fine eye for detail and feeling for idiom, providing pinpoint precision for his soloist. Emmanuel Despax (b1984, France, now resident in London) is a formidable talent, fleet of finger, elegant of phrase and a true keyboard colourist. Only a certain emotional reserve prevents these performances from competing with the very best.

The substantial filling – and the disc’s main selling point – is the premiere of Stephen Goss’s Piano Concerto, a work commissioned for Despax by SW Mitchell Capital (once it was the church, then the aristocracy, now it’s a European equity fund specialist: bravos for this company, which has also sponsored the CD’s production). The booklet tells us that the Piano Concerto ‘was inspired by the extraordinary design work of the Heatherwick Studio, whose Olympic Cauldron was a centrepiece of the London 2012 Games. Each of the four movements takes a particular Heatherwick project as a starting point before opening out to reveal other landscapes and related ideas.’ You don’t need to know this to enjoy a work I am sure is going to be taken up by many other pianists. After a Fanfare first movement and Moto perpetuo second comes the heart of the piece: a serene, elegiac Adagio – deftly and economically scored like the whole work. The energetic finale is a tour de force for both orchestra and soloist. Equally impressive is the fact that all three works were recorded (with a couple of patching sessions) in a single live concert. Despax’s first concerto disc is, altogether, a noteworthy achievement.