Beethoven’s Second and Fifth Concertos make for an uncommon yet attractively contrasted CD coupling. More importantly, pianist John O’Conor and conductor Andreas Delfs invest these much-recorded scores with deep feeling, relaxed yet never draggy tempi, and freshly considered details that provide a welcome corrective to the attention-getting elbow-pokes and finger-jabs favoured by certain recent contenders in the name of “interpretation”.

Although O’Conor clearly commands world-class virtuosity, he shares his one-time teacher Wilhelm Kempff’s disdain for surface display and propensity for intimate nuance and suggestive colorations. For example, in the B flat Concerto, the way O’Conor’s change of sonority imbues the momentary change of key 4'24" into the first movement with appropriate mystery, or the cadenza’s effectively playful rhythmic fluctuations.

The pianist similarly plays down his bravura opportunities in the Emperor and insists upon being an equal partner. Listen to how flexibly and effortlessly he guides the first movement’s plaintive B major episode back into the orchestra’s military mood, or the chamber-like give and take governing the development section’s sequences of scales. The London Symphony Orchestra provide vibrant and unfailingly alive support under Delfs’s caring leadership, with the heartfelt, singing strings standing out in the slow movements. Even inan overcrowded Beethoven concerto market, these distinctive and excellently engineered performances are well worth hearing.