Russian superstar pianist Daniil Trifonov first stunned Australian audiences when he made his debut with Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 2017 playing the first of Sergei Rachmaninov’s four piano concertos. Now he’s back to perform the last of the quartet in Sydney and the notorious Rach 3 three times in Melbourne.

Dubbed by London’s The Times as “the most astounding pianist of our age”, the 34-year-old New York-based virtuoso is sharing the tour with German baritone Matthias Goerne for recitals of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise and Schwanengesang song cycles.

Daniil Trifonov. Photo supplied

The fourth is the least popular of the set, and the SSO has programmed it rarely since the composer last revised it in 1941, with two of those performances under the baton of Conductor Laureate Vladimir Ashkenazy.

Trifonov made an eloquent case for its wider inclusion with a bravura edge-of-the-seat reading under Asher Fisch – over from Perth where he is Principal Conductor and Artistic Adviser of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. That said, however, there are few pianists who could come close to what he brought to the stage.

The opening rising double-octave chords made for a high-impact launch as,...