Khachaturian lost out to himself in the Stalin Prize stakes of 1940. His ambitious Piano Concerto looked like a sure contender but at the last moment it was replaced by the more crowd-pleasing Violin Concerto, which took the prize. The Piano Concerto, written four years earlier, was just a little too unruly and dissonant for official tastes by 1940. But we can appreciate it today as a stupendous piece that perfectly encapsulates Khachaturian’s magical blend of Prokofiev, Ravel, Albéniz and the folk music of the Caucasus mountains.

Iyad Sughayer has already won much acclaim as a champion of Khachaturian’s little-known piano music. The Piano Concerto, featuring Sughayer with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Andrew Litton, begins imperiously, the piano bold and bright in the foreground. Sughayer’s exciting delivery has clarity, rhythmic precision, brilliant virtuosity and a translucent impressionism in the gentler passages. His approach is startlingly at odds with the performance tradition that can be traced back to Khachaturian himself (he conducted the piece) and preserved in various Soviet recordings that I’ve listened to from childhood onwards. Together with Litton, he eschews the subtle lilt in the opening triple-time rhythms that we hear in the legendary recording Khachaturian made with Nikolai Petrov as soloist (variously available), and their other dance inflections are likewise jettisoned. Sughayer and Litton seem to have a policy of stripping away everything that might strike today’s listener as a sensual orientalist cliché. To this end, the zesty cluster chords are downplayed in both the piano and strings, and the cadenzas lack the improvisatory freedom of Petrov or Alicia de Larrocha.

The Concerto-Rhapsody of 1968 comes from the other end of Khachaturian’s career, when the composer could look back on his past successes with a little irony, as in the echoes of his famous ‘Sabre Dance’ in the scherzo episode. Where Petrov and Khachaturian were fiery and capable of reaching moments of intense tragedy, Sughayer and Litton are instead sinister in a machine-like manner. Where the older recording of the scherzo was caustic, the new recording is content to be playful. This recasting of the work is often fresh and revealing, allowing hidden elements of Prokofiev and Poulenc to surface and also releasing Khachaturian from the golden cage of the ‘ethnic’ composer, to soar free over the landscape of international modernism (Khachaturian was conscious of the problem). The question still remains, though, whether the price is too high in terms of the Rhapsody’s integrity. The more restrained cadenzas, for example, are still followed by explosive tuttis, but these now seem dramatically unmotivated.

Whatever our view on these moot points, this is a highly engaging and enjoyable album. The entertaining solo piano version of the Masquerade suite is an attractive extra. There is also the fresh experience of hearing the musical saw in the Concerto’s slow movement, instead of the ‘exotic’ flexatone specified in the score. And, of course, we should welcome the chance to hear these rarely played but very deserving pieces with the benefit of modern sound.