Under Olli Mustonen’s leadership from the piano, the Tapiola Sinfonietta play Beethoven’s first two concertos frighteningly well. String vibrato subscribes to the period-instrument movement’s minimal extreme, woodwinds cut through the textures with colourful bite, timpani strokes boast cutting impact, while the brass is uncouth and funky (intentionally so, one suspects).

When it comes to piano playing, nothing gets in the way between Mustonen’s brain and fingers. He put his virtuosity away long ago, and focuses instead on minutely calibrated dynamic gradations and accents of all shapes and sizes. This especially bodes well for knotty contrapuntal episodes such as the Second Concerto’s brilliantly negotiated first movement cadenza (Mustonen provides his own stylish and imaginative cadenzas for the First Concerto’s outer movements). He also commands one of the most pliable staccato techniques in the history of piano playing, and never lets listeners forget that.

The problem is that Mustonen’s approach to Beethoven’s frequently idiosyncratic phrasings and sudden dynamic contrasts tends to draw more attention to the pianist than the composer. For example, he often underlines Beethoven’s characteristic szforzandi to exaggerated or mannered effect, trivialising their sense of stress or surprise (the First Concerto’s opening solo). And his fussy, chopped up delivery of the finale’s main theme in both concertos smacks more of micro-management than musical sense. At least the orchestra shapes the same phrases relatively “normally”. In both conventional two-channel and SACD surround-sound playback modes, Ondine’s vivid sonics bristle with detail..