Ingolf Wunder first came to public attention in 2010 when he was awarded joint second prize in the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. The Austrian pianist’s latest release was recorded two years ago at St Petersburg’s 2012 White Nights festival – a live concert, though you wouldn’t know it: the Russians, normally enthusiastic coughers, here manage to keep their expectorating mysteriously silent and the ‘frenzied applause’ with which, according to the booklet, the ‘performance was rewarded’ has been excised. A pity; for, deprived of any sense of occasion, the disc is simply another recording of two very good performances of two much-recorded concertos about which, frankly, neither Wunder nor his conductor has much new to say.

Ashkenazy, who 55 years earlier also won second prize at the Chopin Competition, knows the Tchaikovsky backwards, of course (though he dropped it from his piano repertoire early on), and he is at pains to let us hear Tchaikovsky’s scoring in meticulous detail: witness the full three beats of the morendo horn note that overlaps the other brass instruments in the final bar (107 – 4'08") of the ‘introduction’. Though Ashkenazy and Wunder make entirely empathetic partners, the balance in general favours orchestral detail at the expense of the piano (listen to the final pages of the two outer movements). This is less of a problem in Chopin’s E minor, with its sparser texture, and ipso facto the accompaniment is no mere backdrop for Wunder but a closely argued dialogue. He plays this concerto superbly – in particular the Romanze and the last movement – and the recorded sound has a ringing clarity and depth.