I know this feeling well! I spent three-and-a-half hours one afternoon last summer recording a five-minute composition by a friend of mine. I was recording it as a present for them. After hearing my recording they were not pleased with the sound quality of the recording, so I had to shelve the recording! In all fairness, they later apologized but by then the fall semester had begun and I was too busy to try to re-record their composition.

A veteran sound engineer once told me that some contemporary recordings of concerti (he mentioned at least one such recording to me) are (perhaps not surprisingly) created in a studio setting, like a rock album. The soloist plays through their part until they do so perfectly (or until the producer creates the impression of a perfect performance through editing) and the solo part is overdubbed over the orchestral "backing track" (!).