Adding the Rhapsodie roumaine (the 20th Rhapsody) and the late Hungarian Rhapsodies Nos 16-19, Giovanni Bellucci is unusually comprehensive in his new two-CD album. And, after his highly praised way with the rigours of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, he now lets his hair down with a vengeance, revelling in every opportunity for virtuoso brio and teasing idiosyncrasy.

Yet, despite his obvious quality, Bellucci often reminded me of a sniping response to the Rhapsodies where their ‘extravagance and glaring theatricality’ (Edward Sackville-West) was noted. Laxity – particularly rhythmic laxity – posing as freedom can be peculiarly undermining in the Rhapsodies. Try the final sprints of Nos 10 and 11 and you will hear telescoped rhythms and a lack of focus, and, both here and elsewhere, too many details snatched and swallowed up in the whirl of events. Blowing hot and cold, I would say that, while Bellucci gives us little of the studio and everything of the freedom and daring of the concert hall, there is also a too self-conscious striving for Liszt’s gypsy idiom, too little of Brendel’s insistence, in his selection of the Rhapsodies, on higher musical matters. This is particularly true of the austere and desolate poetry of the late Rhapsodies where once again Bellucci finds it difficult to leave well alone. The 20th Rhapsody is more a curiosity than intrinsically worthwhile and overall my preference is for Misha Dichter’s recently reissued set (Newton Classics, 7/11), for Cziffra’s sky-rocketing if extravagant aplomb (EMI), for Horowitz and Argerich in No 6, Rubinstein in No 10, Kapell in No 11, Katchen in No 12, Cherkassky in No 13 and, perhaps most of all, Edith Farnadi in Nos 16-19. There you will hear technique in super-abundance but also the achievement of more with less.