Scharwenka’s Piano Concerto No 1 is one of the greatest of all Romantic piano concertos. Completed in 1877, charming, full of pretty melodies, exhibitionist and fiendishly difficult, it should be heard regularly in concert halls around the world with a plethora of different recordings from which to choose. But it isn’t and there aren’t. Jonathan Powell’s is only the sixth commercial recording to be made of the work – and it had to wait a long time before the first.

When Earl Wild played it in Carnegie Hall in 1969 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf, it was the first time the concerto had been heard in the US since 1893, when the composer was soloist (with, incidentally, the same orchestra). In his review of the concert, Harold Schonberg, the distinguished critic of The New York Times, described the concerto as ‘a period piece, a bravura work in the late 19th-century rhetoric … It is a wing-ding of a romp, one in which the pianist starts with a great splurge and scarcely removes his hands from the keys for the next half hour’.

Wild had learned the work with a Scharwenka pupil in the 1920s. His 1969 recording remains the benchmark, played with light hands and a light heart, while fully realising the essential elements of gung-ho drama and pyrotechnic heroics. Another 23 years passed before the Scharwenka No 1 was recorded again, this time by Seta Tanyel (Collins Classics), followed a decade later by Laurence Jeanningros (Centaur) and, in 2005, by the great Marc-André Hamelin. His dispatch of the solo part is breathtaking, jaw-dropping, verging on the impossible – and that is what I miss in his account: there is no struggle, no defiance or sense of fiery desperation. It all sounds too easy. Its last outing on disc was a decade ago in the hands of Alexander Markovich, about which I see I was unaccountably negative. Returning to it again for this review, there is much to admire as there is, indeed, in Jonathan Powell’s performance, with which it has much in common. Both relish the valiant soloist v orchestra narrative, play with great reserves of power and are helped not a little by their conductors – Neeme Järvi for Markovich and Łukasz Borowicz for Powell, who galvanises his Poznan´ players to make the most of Scharwenka’s masterly orchestration. Not as fleet of hand as Wild or Hamelin, Powell does not quite match the former’s teasing nonchalance in the marvellous Scherzo, and neither he nor Hamelin rival Wild in the third movement’s climax. That said, if Powell is to be your introduction to the concerto, you will not be disappointed.

Scharwenka’s First (and only extant) Symphony has been recorded once before, by the Gävle SO under Christopher Fifield (Sterling, 7/04), which I have not heard. Coming after the concerto, its four-movements (39'02") come across as worthy and well constructed but without the same individual voice so apparent in the concerto – and certainly lacking its memorable thematic material. But neither is it a negligible piece of work and the elegiac slow (third) movement and exuberant finale are surely enough to tempt others to programme it. Borowicz has a special affinity with this corner of the repertoire, as will be evident from those familiar with his recordings for Hyperion.