This recording arrived at the close of Beethoven’s anniversary year and features an unusual partnering of a piano sonata and an arrangement of the Sixth Symphony. The selling point is Martha Argerich, though it is the Greek pianist Theodosia Ntokou, a protégée of Argerich, who performs the bulk of the music.

Arrangements of Beethoven symphonies were two-a-penny in the 19th century, serving as a way to disseminate the music in a pre-recording era. Liszt of course springs immediately to mind but there are plenty of others, and this one of the Sixth Symphony is by the now-obscure organist, composer and educator Selmar Bagge. George Grove gave him short shrift in his eponymous dictionary – ‘his music is correct and fluent, but poor in invention and melody’ – although Bagge was clearly talented as an arranger and in his version for four hands at two pianos he is careful to retain as much of the textural and dynamic richness of Beethoven’s original as possible.

Argerich takes Piano 1 and you sense it is very much her interpretation, with a characteristic responsiveness that makes everything feel fresh. The first movement is suitably bucolic, with the two pianists revelling in Beethoven’s good cheer, while in the second, the ‘Scene by the brook’, they’re alive to the different birdsong effects. I had slight reservations about some moments in the ‘Peasants’ merrymaking’ but that is down to the nature of the transcription rather than the performance. That said, Argerich and Ntokou give the stomping Trio plenty of verve and they never lapse into aggression in the biggest climaxes. The fourth-movement ‘Storm’ also poses a perhaps insurmountable challenge in translating the darkness of the deep string tremolos to the keyboard. That aside, there’s plenty of drama to be found here. And the shepherd’s pipe call (originally heard on clarinet, then horns) that links the two movements and becomes the main theme of the finale is deftly brought out of the texture with real clarity and soulfulness. The pacing here, as throughout, sounds very natural.

So far, so good. I can see why Argerich is drawn to Ntokou’s playing, for it has a certain freedom and daring, though how well that translates to a middle-period Beethoven sonata is an open question. Throughout her Tempest, I find the accentuation tends to be overdone and in the first movement she doesn’t reveal the tension between driving Allegro and the recitative-like adagio writing in the way that, say, Kovacevich and Goode do. The second movement drags a little, which is less a matter of tempo than a lack of an underlying pulse. Ntokou also underplays the febrile quality of the finale, replacing it with an ill-judged Romanticism that doesn’t convince. But this is worth a listen for the Sixth Symphony.