Violins not spread out but bunched on the left, cellos and basses similarly on the right. The piano is dead centre but its tone is shallow; and the hazy reproduction of the orchestra, violins a bit grainy too, softens the band’s expertly played contribution. The presentation isn’t helpful to a composer who for long has been only a name in books and whose music was, nearly a century ago, considered to be ‘of skilful industry rather than originality’.

There is some truth in this. Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838), Beethoven’s pupil who also publicised the master’s cause, was a ‘deft pianist’ (David Dubal) and, in these concertos he wrote for himself, tended to spin out his dexterity mostly in lengthy finales of slender musical content. The traces of glibness that surface periodically cannot thus be ascribed to Christopher Hinterhuber, who carries the notes with pinpoint accuracy. Yet Ries’s skills as an expert orchestrator also surface regularly, especially in the two slow movements that are of a touching largesse, reflecting another side of his personality. And not lost on Hinterhuber or Uwe Grodd, who home in on the strengths and emphasise them, not least in the finest work here, the eighth and last piano concerto, Op 177. It’s on a bigger scale, particularly in the orchestral ritornello of the first movement that Grodd offers as an imposing exposition, taken up by Hinterhuber who is equally aware of its quality. ‘Skilful industry’ wasn’t Ries’s only attribute.