This is the third time Czerny’s A minor Piano Concerto has appeared in these pages in as many issues, if you count the reissue of Felicja Blumental’s 1971 Turnabout recording included in the 40-disc box of Rare Romantic Concertos from Brilliant Classics (see my review on page 87). Harriet Smith did not think much of the recent account with soloist Rosemary Tuck (Naxos, 6/16), advising readers to save their money and wait for a forthcoming Hyperion release from Howard Shelley. Having listened to the present recording (from Brilliant Classics again, but made in 2014) I can only urge readers to heed that advice in this case too.

After the lengthy opening tutti, the soloist enters gingerly before striking a fortissimo octave C natural above the stave. It is rare that the sound of a piano makes me wince – but it did here. David Boldrini leaves you in no doubt that he is playing a percussion instrument. Nor that the work is in A minor. Nor that the piano has been placed at an uncomfortable distance from the orchestra, leaving it to operate in a different and glassy acoustic. Here, the concerto emerges as a string of technical studies with a rudimentary orchestral backdrop – and the work is better than that. Blumental, though more sprightly than Tuck, may not be quite as nimble as Boldrini but I prefer her Mozartian elegance and Turnabout’s elderly sound any day. For the Czerny Four-Hand Concerto turn to the peerless Tal & Groethuysen for their 2014 account (Sony Classical ).

Brilliant Classics’ unlikely coupling, Viotti’s Concerto in G minor, also appears, strangely, in their box-set (as CD 24, with Blumental as the soloist once more). This and the two-movement Concerto for violin and piano pre-date the Czerny by some 40 years, well-crafted, instantly forgettable, production-line stuff. The lengthy booklet (English only) will tell you all about them, though nothing about the soloist, conductor or the less-than-ideal orchestra.