This is a superbly recorded disc of music that says not very much but says it consummately well. Newcomers unfamiliar with the composer’s reactionary sound world should perhaps start elsewhere: a previous disc in this series contained both the Variations on a Nursery Theme and the Suite in F sharp minor‚ works familiar from the days of LP and rightly so (Chandos‚ 9/99). On the other hand‚ if you are already hooked‚ you won’t need me to persuade you that Dohnányi’s compositional know­how goes a long way to compensate for a dearth of memorable melodic material. Certainly‚ his lush yet precise orchestration transforms the folk­tinged easy listening of the Ruralia hungarica (1924) into a thing of wonder. The composer concocted four alternative works with this title for disparate forces so you may vaguely recognise one or other of the pieces. The tunes are authentically Transylvanian‚ even if their garb owes more to Brahms than to Bartók‚ with some Heldenleben­period Richard Strauss thrown in for good measure. Matthias Bamert and the BBC Philharmonic bring their customary textural clarity (and lean string tone) to music that might conceivably pall in less sympathetic hands. One snag for the cash­strapped collector is the presence of the much earlier First Piano Concerto‚ already included (alongside No 2) in Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series. Bryce Morrison found Martin Roscoe ‘superbly authoritative’ there‚ although backwardly placed in relation to the BBC Scottish Symphony. No such balance problems intrude this time. Howard Shelley is as elegant and professional as you might expect‚ notwithstanding what would seem to be coordination problems at one point in the first movement (towards 4'45"). The slow movement is the biggest surprise‚ positively Brucknerian at the start‚ as Matthew Rye suggests in his useful notes. Otherwise it’s Brahms and Liszt all the way‚ with just a hint of Saint­Saëns‚ bags of conventional piano figuration and an overblown apotheosis. We appear to be into a Dohnányi revival‚ but I wonder how many readers are still bothered by the bizarre trajectory of the pianist­composer’s wartime career. It seems disingenuous to claim that Dohnányi‚ whose son was executed for his involvement in the 1944 plot on Hitler’s life‚ was forced to flee abroad: his immediate destination was Austria‚ then on to the US by way of Argentina. He composed (like Korngold) Germanically – and there’s no crime in that‚ least of all when the results combine technical acumen with elegance and charm. Perhaps someone out there can elucidate?