One of the virtues of a collection like this one is that it enables us to discover that each of Rachmaninov’s piano concertos is a very different musical event.

Rachmaninov was just eighteen when he composed his First Piano Concerto. The bold fanfare and cascading opening cadenza confirm that this is a young man’s work, although it is with the second theme, a flowing cantabile in the relative major, that we hear something of the composer’s familiar voice.

The name of hypnotist Nikolai Dahl is inscribed at the head of the score of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2. The story of the creative block that came upon Rachmaninov after the catastrophic first performance of his First Symphony in 1897 is well known. Whatever the influence of his exchanges with Dr Dahl, the block was freed and the first major work to follow was the Second Piano Concerto. Rachmaninov wrote the Third Piano Concerto in 1909 for his first American concert tour: it is the longest and most complex of the concertos and, as a formal structure, the finest. The Fourth Piano Concerto, written in 1926, is always regarded as the ‘Cinderella’ of the group. It is by far Rachmaninov’s darkest and most anxiety-ridden concerto with scoring that is often edgy and brittle, and the harmony that is increasingly dissonant. Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Rachmaninov’s largest Concertante work, is not a rhapsody at all but a set of twenty-four variations on the theme of Paganini’s famous Twenty-fourth Caprice for solo violin.