How rare to hear Rachmaninov playing of Rustem Hayroudinoff’s enviable ease and inclusiveness. Musicianly to the core, without a trace of exaggeration, whipped-up rhetoric or histrionics, he makes you fall in love all over again with both the Op 23 Preludes and the still richer Op 32 set. Even Op 3 (the Rachmaninov Prelude) takes on a special distinction in such a devoted recreation of all of its drama. What sweep and continuity in Op 23 No 2, and how his quick tempo emphasises the anxiety and uncertain temper of the testy Minuet of No 3. Hayroudinoff is hauntingly confiding in the central polyphony of No 4, where three voices chime and resonate against each other, and if No 7 is more Presto than Allegro its dark tumult of sound is never achieved at the expense of clarity and melodic outline.

Once more in Op 32 everything flows with a natural lyric grace and impetus, casting a special light on every serene or turbulent page of these indelibly Russian works. What gentleness in No 5 and how idiomatically he achieves the ebb and flow (accelerando, ritenuto, accelerando, etc) without a hint of pedantry in No 12. Finally, in the massive and daunting No 13 even the most fearsome difficulties are unravelled with unfaltering lucidity, tonal warmth and glow. In Liszt’s immortal description of a true virtuoso, everything is allowed to ‘weep and sing and sigh’.

Competition may be strong from the urbane Howard Shelley, from Ashkenazy and most of all from Moura Lympany (whose long-cherished discs from the 1950s are at last to appear on CD), but Hayroudinoff, a young Russian resident in London, speaks with a voice all his own. To top it all, Chandos has given us sound of demonstration quality.