Last week Vladimir Ashkenazy, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s Conductor Laureate, treated audiences to a program of well-worn (but well-loved) English classics, and while on the surface this concert appeared to be in the same vein – thanks to the headlining of Holst’s popular orchestral suite The Planets – the first half was devoted to a much rarer Russian work, Nikolai Medtner’s mammoth Piano Concerto No 1.

Vladimir Ashkenazy. Photo © Keith Saunders

Largely overshadowed by his fellow pianist-composer contemporary – and friend – Sergei Rachmaninov, Medtner’s music has something of an Australian connection, with Geoffrey Tozer’s advocacy helping to drive a reassessment of the neglected composer, including an award-winning recording of all three Piano Concertos (the composer’s only orchestral works) with the London Symphony Orchestra and Neeme Järvi in 1992. More recently, Jayson Gillham followed with his own recording of the First with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Benjamin Northey. For all that, though, this is the first time the Sydney Symphony Orchestra has tackled the mammoth concerto, which was composed between 1914 and 1918, before the composer left the Soviet Union to settle, ultimately, in London.

The work had a robust...