It can’t be easy being Lang Lang, what with the hype surrounding him as the world’s favourite pianist and all. And yet as a commercial commodity the 30-year-old’s been delivering that showmanship and technical excellence ever since he wowed Beijing and the world more than half his lifetime ago. The hard bit comes in translating the unparalleled reputation into musical performances that truly take your breath away year after year. He remains a wonderful player, the recording quality of his discs is a given, and in the show- off works like those featured on his previous Liszt album, his extrovert style is hard to beat.

But Chopin? Sure, it’s well- known that Lang Lang has built much of his career on this beloved composer’s work, and for the non- specialist music-lover buying on the performer’s well-deserved reputation alone, there will be more than enough musical ability here to leave a favourable impression. But for those comparing Lang Lang’s Chopin
 with recent efforts by the now- septuagenarian Maurizio Pollini
on DG, and Lang Lang’s labelmate, young tearaway Khatia Buniatishvili, things become more competitive.

With all the poetry and sadness deriving from a lifetime of supreme musicianship, Pollini’s take on
the 24 Preludes Op 28 and other Chopin works is a treasure, played with deep humanity, deceptive simplicity, and profound beauty.

At the opposite extreme is the knock-your-jocks-off passion of the Georgian Buniatishvili, the 25-year-old with music’s most lethal-looking pout. In an album of Chopin highlights, including the famous 
C# Minor Waltz Op 64/2 and the Second Piano Concerto, she’s there cooing in your ear one moment, making you weep with regret the next, before suddenly unleashing her inner hellcat. Lang Lang can’t compete with that. Instead, he shows off his prodigious chops throughout the centrepiece Op 25 Études, his fluttering fingers all over No 2 in F Minor and the D-Flat Major No 8 sounding suitably odd.

Elsewhere, there’s enough personality in the Grande Valse Brillante to front a television game show, but the glorious C# Minor Nocturne (Op post) somehow seems mannered, locked in the performance rather than flying upwards into the ether. Chopin first-timers and lovers of big-name performers alike won’t mind
 that, but for those wanting to be transported, the wise older man and the volatile femme-fatale will both get you further toward Chopin heaven than the gifted celebrity.