Sudbin and his ten fingers don’t like to take the easy way out. Rachmaninov’s least-performed piano concerto, No 4, is played in its original version (longer, craggier and wilder). Listeners get another earful in the second concerto by Nikolai Medtner: a garrulous work short of melodic charm, but crammed with rhythmic ingenuity, structural subtleties and agreeable high spirits. Decent support comes from the enterprising North Carolina Symphony and their conductor, Grant Llewellyn.
(BIS)