One of the encores to Brendel’s farewell recital in Hanover, on December 14, 2008, is Beethoven’s A major Bagatelle, Op 33 No 4. It’s a gentle, lilting piece, but the humour is reassuringly sharp, and so is the sense of timing. And that goes for both composer and pianist: Brendel was right to leave the stage after 60 years of concert-giving, with both his humour and his trilling (as K271 shows) intact.

There is much to glory in here. His Schubert, for instance. The final sonata was a moving choice in itself and the performance is all that you would expect: there’s no grandstanding, no inordinately extreme tempi (à la late Richter) but throughout there’s the sense that Brendel understands every aspect of Schubert’s late masterpiece, has pondered it deeply, but the result is anything but ponderous. It starts so naturally it’s as if you walked in on his performance, mid-stream, so to speak. The weighting of individual chords, the underlying pulse, the tempo – all grow from a decades-long familiarity. In the Andante sostenuto – and in the slow sections of the Beethoven sonata too – Brendel spins the musical line quite beautifully. It’s a reminder that, for all his reputation as a cerebral musician, he’s by no means a cool player. Beauty per se may not be his ultimate aim, but listening to the Schubert G flat major Impromptu, and the way he picks the melody out of the air, it’s impossible to remain unmoved.

It’s fitting that these discs should also include a Mozart concerto. My earliest exposure to Brendel’s playing – indeed, my earliest exposure to Mozart concertos (and I’m sure for many others too) – was via the series he made on Turnabout with Antonio Janigro, their naive art cover designs adding to the appeal for a not-quite teenager. Here we have Mozart’s first great concerto, K271, with Brendel joined by his more recent Mozartian partner, Sir Charles Mackerras. It’s a musical marriage made in heaven, especially when you add the VPO to the mix. Every phrase has such detail, such intricate colouring, yet, again, it’s detailing that comes of long exposure to a work, built up over the years like a patina, rather than something superficially applied on a single level. The performance is unhurried but not in any way sluggish, and the slow movement is utterly glorious. You can hear faint vocalisations from Brendel, here and elsewhere, but they don’t intrude unduly.

There is so much to admire throughout these two discs: his Mozart sonata is another treasure, and his soulful yet grand Bach/Busoni Chorale Prelude reminds us of repertoire from much earlier in his career, but for me perhaps the highlight is the Haydn – a composer absolutely made for Brendel’s gifts (or should it be the other way round?). Rather than a sonata, we have here the F minor Variations, an apt example not only of Haydn’s innovative formal genius but also a reminder that he, too, could write melodies to melt the heart. There is greatness to be found in every bar of these two discs, and that goes not only for the music but the musician too.