I wonder if directing the Beethoven piano concertos from the keyboard is going to become a new orthodoxy? I hope not. Exceptional conductor-pianists experienced in presenting the Mozart concertos in this way occasionally perform the Second Beethoven – the B flat major – to good effect but I’m not convinced the other four lend themselves to a chamber-like concentration of delivery. Granted, there are passages in which intimate voices and ‘interior’ qualities are to the fore but this is not chamber music writ large.

Rudolf Buchbinder is on easy terms with Beethoven and the piano but his familiarity doesn’t seem to me to be matched by distinction in directing the concertos. I wonder what the Vienna Philharmonic thought of him as a conductor; their faces give little away. It’s obvious that his gestures, in spite of the busyness, are not making anything happen, much, and he doesn’t transmit the notion that the soloist’s role, in all its variety, is a determining factor in the interest of the whole. You just wait for him to resume playing and do the next bit. A collaborative venture is not on offer, therefore, only a traversal of these inexhaustible pieces in which any dramatic expression resulting from the interplay of piano and orchestra seems haphazard and, at best, generalised in effect.

Buchbinder is a player – a good one – rather than an interpreter, and nowhere is this more evident than in the first movement of the C major, No 1. He has observed that the opening movements of the first three concertos are all marked Allegro con brio but his way with them does not convey that they have different things to say. Tempo is a quality rather than a quantity – with, of course, an area of character suggested by con brio, but the qualifier doesn’t make its nature exact and the same for each piece. In No 1 Buchbinder is spirited but not really exhilarating, the tempo held in so that the fortissimo downward run in semiquavers before the recapitulation can be played as wrist octaves rather than a glissando. On a half-hour interview track with Joachim Kaiser, Buchbinder shows himself to be proud of his ability to do this, apparently not having asked himself whether such a Lisztian effect might be inappropriate in a work of Beethoven of 1798.

And there you have him, I think, a man who plays Beethoven with the innocent self-assurance of the virtuoso – while claiming respectability (in the interview, again) through his possession of lots of editions and the comparative study of textual detail that these have afforded him. He is happiest in the set when his hands are full: in the finales, for instance, where the forthrightness and his technical address are admirable and he can cook up a storm or two. Could this be energy substituting for musically shaped phrasing and a true play of dynamic life? Well, possibly, but never mind. As for such subtleties as the magic and drama in the first movement of the Emperor when the orchestra produces ethereal effects and the piano withdraws into mysterious stillness – look elsewhere.

C Major is marketing these DVDs alongside its set of the Beethoven symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic and Christian Thielemann (‘Music to Watch’), reviewed by Peter Quantrill in April. When you have audio only the music stands alone and must satisfy down to the smallest detail. If you have the experience of hearing and seeing, the performance is of course appreciated by both senses. I’ve been a bit of a grouse, I know, but I doubt I’ll be listening and watching again.