Serge Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto has been hijacked by popular culture to such an extent that it can be difficult to listen to it without conjuring up images of Marilyn Monroe’s staircase descent in a ballgown in Billy Wilder’s Seven Year Itch or those terribly British lovers in David Lean’s Brief Encounters. It is easy to forget that it is in many ways the perfect piece which, as Stephen Hough says, sounds as though it wrote itself, and now Russian born American pianist Kirill Gerstein has come up with a near-perfect recording of it with the Berliner Philharmoniker, superbly helmed by Kirill Petrenko.

It’s hard to detect any weaknesses. Gerstein is full of assurance and makes exciting “right” choices. Petrenko and the orchestra are in wonderful form and the rich production values make for a totally irresistible package. There is a freedom to Gerstein’s playing that you don’t find in many concert pianists, perhaps because when young he was a jazzman, only fully concentrating on the classical repertoire later, despite taking a prize at the International Bach Competition in Poland when he was 11. Meeting the great jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton was...