Rudolf Buchbinder offers the standard pairing of Mozart’s two most popular piano concertos: the stormy D minor (K466) and the C major (K467), once named Elvira Madigan after a slender Swedish film that used its slow movement on the soundtrack. He performs live with the Staatskapelle Dresden in ‘Die Gläserne Manufaktur’, a futuristic car factory. I’m sure the concerts from which these recordings were taken were splendid events but the reasons for issuing them on disc are unclear.

Buchbinder’s piano is spotlit in the mix to such a degree that it dominates the sound picture. Passages, notably in the D minor Concerto, in which the piano should provide a gentle rumble underpinning the orchestral tutti are skewed to such an extent as to undo the entire raison d’être of these works. We were all taught at college that Mozart perfected the keyboard concerto as a dialogue between the ‘characters’ of the piano and (especially) the woodwind, in a style not dissimilar to his operatic ensembles. Here Buchbinder comes over as the pub bore, shouting his opinions down the bar and obliterating the conversation.

Being live, there are some fluffs and some lumpy passagework which would have prompted a retake in studio conditions. The piano sound becomes insistent on isolated notes above the treble stave. Buchbinder is most persuasive in the cadenzas, though: the usual Beethoven in the D minor, his own in the C major. A visual record of the concerts, also preserving Mozart’s final piano concerto, K595, is available (C Major Entertainment ◊ 733908 or Y 734004). A souvenir d’occasion, perhaps, but little more.