Stephen Hough’s Piano Concerto is so immediate, lyrical, fluid, evocative, dramatic, witty and knowingly assured that it winningly ingratiates itself on first listening, inviting a quick repeat to savour the adroitly inked-in details beneath its surface sheen.

Prompted by an invitation to write the score for a film about a concert pianist writing a piano concerto (a project that didn’t survive a post-Covid19 pandemic reality check), Hough re-fashioned it into a piece “representing the history of the piano concerto form itself and of the pianists who wrote these works”.

Hence the concerto’s title, The world of yesterday. As it implies, there’s more than a hint of Proustian reflection here to explain its smorgasbord of musical madeleines piquantly sugared and salted by deftly disguised allusions to Viennese waltzes, untamed Stravinskian rhythms, and distinct echoes of Rachmaninov, Richard Strauss, Korngold, Richard Addinsell and others.

Recorded live in The Hallé’s Bridgewater Hall home, with the orchestra’s own Mark Elder congenially at the helm, Hough the pianist is acutely aware of when to interrogate or indulge his own score. In all, it serves as a persuasive...