Valentina Lisitsa virtually invented herself through social media and is supposedly the most viewed pianist on YouTube. If this is supposed to imbue her with cachet, I’m afraid it’s lost on me. The liner notes in this set read more like a media release, giving us chapter and verse about her doubts and tribulations (as if these were somehow unique to her) and adopt an unduly reverential tone, hardly worthy of a label like Decca. Since she and her husband (with whom she initially attempted a duo pianist career before abandoning it for a solo career) sank their life savings into this project and allegedly paid for the LSO, conductor and venue themselves, one can only wish them luck. One review has described this undertaking as the latter-day equivalent of vanity publishing. Lisitsa mentions that there was no rehearsal and she hadn’t met the conductor before the recording sessions. It shows in the playing – competent, the least one would expect from the LSO, but hardly incandescent.

The First and Fourth concertos have never really interested me very much. The Fourth seems to try (unsuccessfully) to incorporate jazz and the slow movement has the misfortune to bear a resemblance to...