It takes an artist of rare courage and ability to play the Tchaikovsky B flat Concerto in public.

It is music that was first described as too Russian, structurally unsound and impossible to perform, however brilliant and exciting - yet it has become one of the showcases of the piano repertoire. This gigantic warhorse of stupendous technical difficulty combined with a stream of melodic invention, accompanied by great sweeps of orchestral colour has been famously interpreted by celebrated pianists from Emil Gilels to Van Cliburn and Sviatoslav Richter.

Enter award-winning Romanian pianist Alexandra Dariescu who has recently recorded the Concerto for Signum Records. A charming platform poise and glittering silver costume add to the dazzling effect of a spellbinding technique – the young musician played octave passages faster, crisper and clearer than it is possible to imagine, her hands moving in a blur as they spun above and around the keyboard on her particular Hamburg Steinway.

She is capable of exquisite contrasts, delicate themes neatly pointed between the razzle dazzle of bravura passages, and Tchaikovsky’s perennially dancing rhythms beautifully signalled. Barry Wordsworth conducted the Brighton Philharmonic with sensitive skill, conscious of his role in making greatness possible.

He had opened the concert with the rarely heard Overture to Genoveva, and concluded the afternoon with a performance of Brahms Symphony No. 3. The overture to Schumann’s one attempt at opera was a charming and effective curtain raiser but almost nothing could have successfully followed Dariescu’s Tchaikovsky and Brahms’ sedate and densely orchestrated introspection made a muted finale.

Some lightness came from the string passages which chased each other across the platform but the work felt heavy with earnest tradition. A neat concert coincidence: Brahms’ most devoted contemporary champion was Hans von Bulow who premiered the Tchaikovsky No. l. in Boston, 1875.

Louise Dumas