Denis Matsuev won the 1998 Tchaikovsky Competition with a performance of Liszt’s First Concerto and has since emerged, in recital and on disc, as one of the most exciting pianists around. Partnered by one of the great pianist/conductors of the day, we can expect the sparks to fly. They do – but only after a measured opening to the First Concerto, allowing them to hold plenty of firepower in reserve. When the times comes, they certainly deliver: the repeated notes at 1'55" in the finale (Allegro marziale animato) are brilliantly articulated, followed by a faithful observation of Liszt’s requests for ever-increasing tempi. The Second Concerto, too, is up there with the best (Freire, Hough, Katchen, Cohen inter alia), a far cry from the recent dreary Barenboim/Boulez excursion (DG, 1/12). Totentanz is presented with a few tweaks to the solo part and the puzzling addition of four bars of solo horn calls at 10'36" which I can find neither in the solo piano nor the piano-and-orchestra score. Matsuev in the fugato (Var 5) is hair-raising.

This conventional triptych comes with an unconventional extra disc on which Pletnev and his orchestra give us two contrasting symphonic poems. Orpheus is a mainly contemplative depiction of the sublime and the sensuous parts of love. Héroïde funèbre (‘Lamentation for Heroes’ is one translation, ‘Heroic Elegy’ is another) is one of Liszt’s most extraordinary utterances, in which orchestral colours rather than themes and motifs are the prime concern. Is there a more desolate, unsettling opening to a work from the 19th century? Pletnev would have us think not.