Both these fine ‘atypical projects’ are related by their inclusion of Ravel’s G major Concerto which, as Philip Clark points out in his superb note to ‘Sounds of the 30s’, was Ravel’s valentine to Gershwin (Ravel had previously listened in wonder to the latter’s Rhapsody in Blue). For Muraro, too, Ravel, Gershwin, Stravinsky and Fauré offer intriguing cross-currents where the outwardly incongruous becomes subtly related. Muraro, making his debut on DG, is an impressively strong-arm pianist and his energy and enthusiasm are infectious. More volatile than poised, he is at his best in Ravel’s La valse (his second recording), his extrovert nature admirably suited to music that waltzes crazily towards violence and oblivion. His Gershwin is stunningly upfront, characterful and (in the two flanking Allegros) belligerent. But his rough seas in Fauré (his uproar at the climax of both Nocturnes might have appealed to a composer who complained that pianists played him ‘with the shutters down’) is a far cry from Thyssens-Valentin’s subtle and crepuscular artistry, and Ravel’s miniatures also find him heavy-handed and rhythmically unfocused. He is racy and articulate in the Concerto’s finale but elsewhere there is no competition for classic recordings by Michelangeli and most of all Argerich (whose most recent disc of this concerto remains sadly unavailable in the UK).

Paradoxically, Stefano Bollani’s studio-based performance of the same concerto is more immediate than Muraro’s live reading. But his way with the central Adagio, with its memory of far-distant halcyon summers, is insufficiently coloured and inflected, his opening to the finale – unlike Chailly’s richly experienced partnership – distant and muffled. For a primarily jazz musician, he is dull and ponderous in Stravinsky’s naughty, tongue-in-cheek Tango (again, Chailly wins hands down in the orchestral version), and for me the highlight of the disc is Victor de Sabata’s Mille e una notte, a coruscating mix of what Clark calls ‘high art’ and ‘pop vernacular’. Here Marx, Gershwin and Stravinsky rub shoulders with an already assured idiom in music played by Chailly and the Gewandhaus Orchestra with brilliance and refinement rather than forced gaiety and abandon. The de Sabata is worth the price of this record alone.