Is it just a coincidence that this semi-pops recital from Ingolf Wunder features many works both closely associated with and recorded by Vladimir Horowitz? He even plays Moszkowski’s ‘Etincelles’ with the late piano legend’s ending rather than what’s written, while serving up renditions of Scarlatti’s Kk87 B minor and Mozart’s K333 B flat major sonatas that sometimes evoke the older Horowitz’s tapered phrasings and dabs of colour. However, the young Horowitz played his own Danse excentrique more incisively in comparison with Wunder’s softer-grained interpretation. Debussy’s ‘Clair de lune’, Chopin’s Berceuse, Koczalski’s little Valse fantastique and the Rimsky-Korsakov/Rachmaninov Flight of the Bumble-bee are smooth, accurate and not especially memorable. But Wunder’s personality comes more to the fore as he grandly intones the secondary melody of the trio of Rachmaninov G minor Prelude and descends upon the Scriabin étude’s climactic repeated chords like a hungry lion.

While Wunder has no trouble getting out all of the notes in Arcadi Volodos’s fantasy on Mozart’s ‘Rondo alla turca’, Volodos’s more effortless delivery maximises the humour and minimises the bombast. No credit is given to whomever arranged Morricone’s ‘Playing Love’, which finds Wunder at his most expansive and relaxed. And if you’ve always wanted to hear John Williams’s theme from Star Wars trapped inside a generic cornucopia of 19th-century virtuoso piano clichés, here’s your chance. Transcriptions ought to liberate themes so that they can run and play, not suffocate them to death.