Ever since New York Times critic Harold Schonberg panned the Yellow River Concerto in 1973 as a ‘rehash of Rachmaninov, Khachaturian, late Romanticism, bastardised Chinese music and Warner Brother climaxes’, the most-played work in the Chinese piano repertory has had something of an image problem abroad. Lang Lang’s superb rendering on his ‘Dragon Songs’ collection (DG, 3/07) played down the Cultural Revolution politics and made a fresh case for the piece on musical grounds. Unfortunately, this recording sets back the cause a couple of decades.

Unlike Lang’s account, in which every sound conductor Long Yu drew from the China Philharmonic is crisply recorded, Yundi Li’s performance with the newly formed orchestra of China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (recorded in the NCPA Concert Hall) is a muddled mess. Even compared with Eugene Ormandy’s generically romantic reading – recorded just after the Philadelphia Orchestra’s historic tour of China – conductor Chen Zuohuang barely delivers the ‘Warner Bros climaxes’. And instead of Lang Lang’s interpretative method, gleefully approaching the piece as second-rate Rachmaninov, Yundi treats the score dutifully like bad Chopin, poring over the melodies in search of poetic depth that simply isn’t there.

The Chopinesque readings fare better in the solo works that follow, particularly in pieces like Wang Jianzhong’s Five Yunnan Folksongs, which benefit greatly from the improvisatory spirit of a nocturne. But, in general, the remaining assemblage of older, folk-inspired tunes with post-1949 political works is an ill-considered mix that barely holds together musically from piece to piece.