For his first live solo release, James Rhodes mainly offers works he’s previously recorded in the studio, plus Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, which is relatively new to his repertoire. Rhodes speaks at length in between selections, and his remarks about the programme’s composers manage to be informative and irreverant at the same time, with plenty of expletives and sexual innuendo to grab young people’s attention.

However, it’s the music that counts, and for all his self-deprecating charm and punk-rocker persona, Rhodes the pianist largely delivers the goods. He plays the Marcello/Bach D minor Adagio a bit faster and freer live than in the studio, while the decorative passages in Balakirev’s solo transcription of the Romanza from Chopin’s E minor Concerto similarly transpire with greater animation. The studied grandeur of Rhodes’s studio Bach/Busoni Chaconne gives way to an altogether swifter, more fluid and texturally varied rendition in front of an audience. Both the Rachmaninov C sharp minor Prelude and Schumann/Liszt ‘Widmung’ feature lovely interweaving between melody and accompaniment.

However, the studio Moszkowski F major Etude and Grieg/Ginzburg ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ come off cleaner and more controlled, yet with no less bravura and surface excitement. The Waldstein boasts wonderful moments, such as Rhodes’s lyrical simplicity and subtle shading of the Introduzione, and the variegated sonorities he conjures up in the Rondo as a result of taking Beethoven’s controversial long pedal markings on faith. My reservations concern the lack of a first-movement exposition repeat, plus little tenutos, stresses and other expressive tics that cause rhythmic momentum to sag. And why does Rhodes so crudely step on the accelerator pedal for the Rondo’s last measures, or race through the glissando octaves as if he wanted to get this beastly passage over with? Still, Rhodes obviously has it in him to be a persuasive Beethoven interpreter. Whatever persona Rhodes chooses to cultivate in terms of presentation, he certainly is a serious musician.