Sergey Bortkiewicz is one of the lesser known of the many émigrés who escaped from Bolshevik Russia. In his case the adventure took him via Constantinople to eventual settlement in Vienna, where he continued to compose in the academic tradition he had inherited from his teacher Lyadov, and which owes debts in just about equal measure to Schumann and to Franck. The G minor Sonata was composed in Vienna in 1926, but with few exceptions – such as the momentarily Scriabinesque opening bars or the finale’s mildly entertaining changing metres – the predictable, sequence- laden phrases could have come from more or less anywhere in Europe at any time since about 1880. The Suite of 1946 is not unattractive in its more modest terms; presumably it was a pot-boiler or intended as a set of teaching pieces. Best of all are Bortkiewicz’s transcriptions of three of his piano pieces, all of them unpretentious and competently turned. Rachmaninov’s two salon pieces have a deal more individuality than Bortkiewicz and, since they are comparatively rare birds in the catalogue, it is nice to be able to welcome them here.

Performances are serious and decently pre- pared, if not conspicuous for colouristic flair or panache. They are not helped by a so-so Yamaha piano and frankly poor recording (with far too much of the room acoustic). As they are presumably at the outset of their careers, it is baffling that Cristian Persinaru and Nils Franke are given no biographical notes in the booklet. But at bargain-basement price, the scarcity value of the repertoire is obviously the paramount concern.