This unusual programme couples the Scriabin Concerto with solo piano music by Medtner and Prokofiev. Medtner was as scornful as Rachmaninov concerning Prokofiev’s modernism, his “shock of the new” voice. But even he might have capitulated before the charm of Cinderella, where a universal tale is coloured by an all-Russian whimsicality. Veronika Ilinskaya, Russian-born but now resident in England, chooses the last of three sets of transcriptions from the ballet, imbuing it with warmth and assurance, even though she could have made more of the ugly sisters’ lively wrangle or the conclusion to “Amoroso” where the music magically dissolves in a cloud of shimmering memories. Her Medtner is admirably ordered and lucid though for something more urgent and propulsive you will have to turn to Gilels and Moiseiwitsch, the G minor Sonata’s first recorded champions, and, more recently, to Marc-André Hamelin’s wondrous technical sheen and responsiveness to so many mood swings.

Ilinskaya is admirably partnered in the Scriabin Concerto yet once again despite her admirable poise and control her playing fails to take wing and you will hear a far more thrilling empathy with this endearing concerto from Ashkenazy on his classic disc (Decca, 4/89^R). My guess is that this clearly gifted pianist would allow herself more freedom in the concert hall. Meanwhile, she is finely presented and recorded.