What a sensible idea to programme both of Shostakovich’s concertos with the two piano sonatas, with the early First Sonata getting a rare outing on disc. Shostakovich was just 20 when he wrote it – 12‑plus minutes of sheer intensity. Donohoe is an assured and sympathetic guide through its sometimes gnarly textures, encapsulating both its moments of heightened Scriabinesque writing and its Prokofievian energy. In his hands, the intensity never sags and he patently relishes its bravado ending. Shostakovich’s piano teacher Leonid Nikolayev was nonplussed by it: ‘a sonata for metronome to the accompaniment of piano’ was his pithy verdict. Yet Shostakovich clearly forgave him, for the Second Sonata of 1943 is an in memoriam to his teacher. Donohoe captures the quiet desperation that underpins much of the lean-textured opening Allegro. There’s no room to hide in this piece, and occasionally I wanted more palpable beauty in the grave slow movement, but in the variation-form finale, which begins so unassumingly, Donohoe relishes Shostakovich’s occasional bursts of more energetic writing without losing sight of its essentially elegiac tone.

For the two concertos, he’s joined by the Orchestra of the Swan. He’s perhaps more at home in the First Concerto, with stylish trumpet-playing from the under-credited Hugh Davies. Together they find the right degree of jokiness without exaggeration in the outer movements. But the competition is tough and Melnikov has a secret weapon in the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, who are tremendously alive to the colours conjured by Shostakovich, while Hamelin has a lightness of touch that is very infectious. In the slow movement, Donohoe sounds almost prosaic alongside Melnikov’s caressing way with the piano phrases. And let’s not forget Argerich’s extraordinary account of this piece, superbly, wildly impetuous in the best possible manner.

In the Second Concerto, Donohoe is particularly convincing in the outer movements, his colossal technique put to good use in the taut, brilliant finale. In the slow movement, though, again, he doesn’t find the same yearning quality that makes Melnikov’s reading so irresistible.