Following his earlier disc of Reger’s two massive sets of variations (3/99), Marc-André Hamelin takes on the Piano Concerto, making a superb case for its titanic utterance. The influence of Brahms’s piano concertos hangs heavily over Reger’s Op 114 and it is easy to see why Rudolf Serkin, who performed it with Furtwängler, was happy to risk disapproval and espouse its daunting quality (the Concerto’s chequered career is charted by Nigel Simeone in his booklet-notes).

Yet even Serkin would surely have marvelled at Hamelin’s stunning authority. While an easy majority of pianists would run for cover when faced with such sheerly physical demands, Hamelin relishes every challenge, clarifying and refining Reger’s potential for opacity at every point. His first entry, like a thunderclap, makes you leap to attention but so too does his expressive beauty in the subsequent molto tranquillo. There is an unfaltering sense of elegy in the central Largo con gran espressione and an astonishing capacity to resolve every monstrously strenuous problem in the finale.

Then, as Nigel Simeone points out, Richard Strauss’s Burleske is an ideal coupling, making his quote by Michael Kennedy brilliantly apt. For Kennedy, “the genius of the Burleske is that it shows Strauss using parody (of Brahms) as an act of homage”. Hamelin’s reflexes keep his magnificent partners on their toes and he is as beguiling in the second subject as even the most ardent Straussian could wish. Sound and balance in this 53rd of Hyperion’s “Romantic Piano Concerto” releases are impeccable.