Unsurprisingly for a student piece, the first of Kabalevsky’s three piano concertos is a talented blend of Rachmaninov and Prokofiev, with a few echoes of Scriabin on the way. But there is something else there, too, something less characteristic of the mature composer and rather more intriguing – a tone of heavy-hearted reflectiveness. That surfaces especially in the slow movement, with more than a few harmonic shades borrowed from Kabalevsky’s teacher, Myaskovsky. Though the piece is hardly a viable candidate for full repertoire status it certainly deserves a place on the library shelves. There is no current rival recording and the accomplished 14-year-old Korean In-Ju Bang’s enjoyable playing offers a decent stop-gap.

With the Second Concerto, composed seven years later in 1935, Kabalevsky found his niche. The structure is tighter, the textures leaner and the ideas more catchy. Prokofiev is again a role-model, though Kabalevsky seems also to have picked up some tips from Shostakovich’s First Concerto (the debt was repaid when Shostakovich raided Kabalevsky’s first-movement cadenza for the opening idea of his Second Piano Sonata).

Against competition from Kathryn Stott in the Second Concerto, the Korean’s limitations are rather more evident, mainly in terms of authority of touch and range of characterisation. Nor is the Russian Philharmonic any match for the colouristic flair of the BBC Philharmonic, any more than Naxos’s respectable recording is for the brightness and clarity on offer from Chandos. Still, the new disc is perfectly recommendable at its bargain price.