No doubt critics have been sharpening their pens in anticipation of Valentina Lisitsa’s Rachmaninov concerto cycle, which is bound to attract far more than the usual amount of interest due to her extraordinary YouTube popularity. In her notes she admits two things. One is that the recording sessions transpired with virtually no rehearsals or pre-session performance collaborations between herself and conductor Michael Francis. The other is that she purports to base certain aspects of her interpretations on Rachmaninov’s own recordings, along with her determination to avoid the grand old ‘Soviet tradition of butchering Rachmaninov’, where the men show off how fast and loud they can play and the women show off with sexy, languid rubatos.

As it happens, Francis and the London Symphony Orchestra provide consistently world-class, shapely orchestral frameworks and beautifully characterised first-desk solos throughout, albeit without the Hough/Litton edition’s stylistic finish, absolute synchronicity and carefully considered tempo relationships. For her part, Lisitsa doesn’t really channel Rachmaninov’s pianism. Take the main theme in the recapitulation of the First Concerto’s opening movement, for instance, where her rubatos sound arbitrary next to the composer’s pinpoint timing. Furthermore, Hough’s greater variety of articulation better emulates the composer’s dazzling way with the finale’s cross-rhythmic patterns than Lisitsa’s more generic accuracy. While Lisitsa’s supple filigree and textural lightness help make sense of the Third Concerto’s generally fast tempi and her choice of the thicker, heavier and less musically satisfying cadenza option, her tendency to concentrate on the right hand consigns many inner voices and harmonic felicities to oblivion (the specifically phrased bass-line underneath the first movement’s espressivo B flat major theme, to name just one example).

The Second Concerto’s first movement fares best, where Lisitsa’s rubato in the second subject has an unforced give and take, but you can find more incisive and dynamically attentive finales from Richter/Wislocki, Zimerman/Ozawa and Katchen/Solti. Because the piano is slightly forward in the mix, we lose some of the chamber-like repartee in the Paganini Rhapsody’s concertante-like scoring but the brisk and terse approach will appeal to fans of the like-minded yet better balanced Wild, Kapell, Fleisher, Graffman and Kocsis versions. While the LSO play with greater inflection and intensity for Antonio Pappano supporting Leif Ove Andsnes, the brass and winds still make a powerful impact in the Fourth Concerto, which boasts Lisitsa’s most sharply characterised playing; note the sustained lyricism in the Largo’s extended solo passages and the finale’s exciting build-up shortly after the reprise of the first movement’s introduction. In the end, Lisitsa’s fan base won’t care to read about this release’s virtues and drawbacks in face of the reference Hough and Kocsis cycles and other formidable catalogue competitors.