Public taste is a fickle thing. The higher your standing, the greater your fall – pianistic superstars of today take note. As far as 19th-century audiences were concerned, Henri Herz could do no wrong, although he annoyed his more serious counterparts – even Schumann called him a ‘talented hack’. Herz’s talent (a bit like that of the recently departed James Last) lay not in profundity but in pleasing the crowds, and he did that exceptionally well. Howard Shelley is clearly convinced; this is his third Hyperion disc devoted to Herz’s works for piano and orchestra.

Brahms it ain’t (and all the better for that, you may well think). There is a high-spirited quality to everything here: even in C minor, the key of the Second Concerto, there’s a kind of glee underlying the first orchestral tutti. But Herz could also write a gracious tune with the best of them, as witness the lyrical second idea of the concerto’s first movement or the aria-like one that opens the Andantino. And it has to be said that his writing for wind leaves Chopin’s in the shade – he evidently had a particular fondness for the oboe. If the finale is a triumph of effect over substance, it’s engaging enough when played with such élan as here.

The overblown silliness of the percussion and brass opening of the Fille du régiment Fantasy gives way to ever more hair-raising pyrotechnics as its variations progress. It ends in a mood of high campery, the triangle player and piccolo player doing overtime. And though the Fantasy on Rossini’s Otello opens in a darker mood, as befits the subject, it doesn’t stay serious for long. Shelley by turns charms and dazzles.

‘Chopin’, you might think, on hearing the Grande Polonaise brillante, but in fact – as Jeremy Nicholas points out in his predictably entertaining notes – this piece predates Chopin’s own Op 22 Grande Polonaise by several years. It’s a real charmer, especially in the hands of such astute musicians.

Unless your doctor has prescribed some strict froth-free diet (and how tedious would that be), I can heartily recommend a dose of Herz.