Shanghai-born Haochen Zhang took the Gold Medal in the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition and was awarded the 2017 Avery Fisher Prize. He studied with Dan Zhaoyi at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, with Gary Graffman at Curtis in Philadelphia and with Andreas Haefliger in Vienna. His partners here are the Philadelphia Orchestra and the erstwhile French contralto Nathalie Stutzmann, who is now Philadelphia’s principal guest conductor, not to mention music director of the Atlanta Symphony as of this season and chief conductor of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra since 2018. To sample what she’s about, check out the opening tutti of the C minor Concerto (No 3), with its crisp accentuation, vividly delineated phrasing and taut sense of forward movement, and proceed from there. Together, Zhang and Stutzmann’s Beethoven is at once stylistically assured and not quite like any other.

Zhang’s muse is ostensibly a lyric one, although a slightly mischievous sense of playfulness is never far away. The opening cadenzas of the Emperor (No 5) have seldom been attacked with such relish, even glee. The poised balances Stutzmann elicits from her players make one wonder where the wind parts have been hiding all these years. The overall effect of the first movement is unquestionably grand while avoiding pomposity; indeed, the entire concerto holds textural surprises aplenty. I cannot think of a more tender and loving 15-bar orchestral opening of the Adagio than that created by Stutzmann and the Philadelphians. What soloist could fail to sing from the heart with such a lead-in? The Rondo is young, boisterous and carefree, its exquisite phrasing notwithstanding.

Such a sense of extraordinary suspense is built during the development of the C major First Concerto’s first movement that the recapitulation’s return is nothing less than a tremendous relief. In fact, in the relatively transparent textures of the first two concertos, it becomes clear that one of the secrets of Zhang’s irresistibly lithe readings is a vividly characterised left hand. As for Stutzmann, she is ever sensitive both to the surface affect and to its underlying motivation.

With the Bezuidenhout/Heras-Casado/Freiburg Baroque cycle (Harmonia Mundi) wrapped up earlier this year, one might well ask what we’ve done to deserve yet another brilliant collaboration in the Beethoven concertos. Yet Zhang/Stutzmann/Philadelphia is precisely that, and I urge you to not miss it.