For his third DG disc, 22-year-old prize-winning Yundi Li returns to Chopin, performing music which won him standing ovations in Warsaw’s 2000 International Chopin Competition. Powerful, punctilious and heroic his performances may be but they lack the sort of subtlety and engagement that make you marvel anew at Chopin’s originality, his revelatory scope and fervour. The First Scherzo (for Anton Rubinstein ‘the infernal banquet’) is an awe-inspiring chase and explosion of events, and the final pages of the Third are formidably trenchant and articulate. Yet even as you marvel at such mastery you become aware of an almost clinical detachment, as if Chopin’s inner life and spirit could safely be allowed to look after themselves. The Fourth Scherzo (most mercurial and elusive of the set) is notably pedestrian and the three Impromptus (the Fantasie-impromptu appeared on the more successful earlier Chopin disc – 6/02) are likewise devoid of improvisatory charm and magic.

Yundi Li is a dazzling young pianist with his feet on the first rung of the ladder; it is to be hoped will develop into a significant artist as well as a virtuoso. DG’s presentation is lavish, with a gallery of pictures of the pianist but none of the composer. The recordings, made in Berlin, are excellent.