In all four works, the performing is of the highest standard. Louis Lortie is more than equal to Saint-Saëns’s fearsome virtuosity, but alongside heaven-storming finer work is a captivating delicacy…The accompanying is both supple and thrillingly precise while the handsome recorded sound allows a wealth of delicious instrumental detail to emerge.

Lortie is a wonderfully gifted artist, able to generate live performance electricity in the studio, aided and abetted by a conductor who brings a muscular energy to proceedings – and who relishes the details of Saint-Saëns’s orchestration, frequently a little too much...This is not a poor recording by any means, but for me it lacks refinement and that essential Gallic light touch and tone.

Lortie truly has the measure of this music. The Third Concerto (1869) is thrown off, despite its many technical challenges, with breathtaking bravura (though even he fails to persuade that the Allegro non troppo finale is not overlong). The ‘Egyptian’ Fifth – so named because it quotes a Nubian song in the central Andante – fizzes along as convincingly as any competitor. The accompaniments are superb, as is Chandos’ sound.

wonderful music and masterly playing