KEY POINTS:
Liszt's E flat Piano Concerto has survived being dismissed as "the Triangle Concerto" by Eduard Hanslick, one of the most acerbic of the 19th-century critics and ivory-synced by Dirk Bogarde in that droopy 1960 biopic Song without End.
For some it is the nadir of musical vulgarity - and what fun it is watching the good-taste brigade visibly shudder in the stalls when Liszt re-jigs the work's quasi adagio theme into a tub-thumping march.
Yet many New Zealanders have a soft spot for this venerable warhorse; after all, it provided one of our first chances to buy a record by our own Richard Farrell, who recorded it for the old Pye/Nixa label.
Now it turns up on Yundi Li's first concerto outing, paired with Chopin's E minor Concerto, playing alongside the Philharmonia Orchestra under Andrew Davis.
Pluses include a well-upholstered Deutsche Grammophon recording with producer Christopher Alder at the helm, a team of German perfectionists in post-production, and high-profile artists.
And yet, as a whole, it is curiously underwhelming.
Li is a breath-taking technician and Davis a fine conductor but, in tandem, the sparks don't fly as they might.
Search out the early 1962 recording with Sviatoslav Richter and Kyrill Kondrashin if you want to perch on the edge of your seat for 20 minutes.
Li is happiest with the glitter and fireworks, a little self-indulgent when the music calls for deeper emotions and rather obvious in his dramatic underlinings.
But the orchestral delights fare better, especially the many woodwind solos that Liszt deftly threads through the score.
The disc clocks in at a meagre 56 minutes; and 38 minutes 32 seconds of these are accounted for by the Chopin Concerto, which won Li the Chopin International Competition in 2000.
This is a deeply flawed work, and it needs more magic than is around on this occasion to make the 19 minutes of its first movement go any faster.
Chopin's orchestrations seem as stodgy as ever and while Li dashes his glitter around in the final Rondo, it is all too little too late to save the day.
* Yundi Li plays Liszt and Chopin (Deutsche Grammophon 477 6402)
