This great musician and ambassador for music celebrated in 2010 the diamond jubilee of his public debut. He has just signed a new record deal, maintains a hectic schedule conducting operas, orchestras and world premieres and still, somewhat miraculously, finds time to keep in fine pianistic trim. Not that this recital, a prestigious occasion given in the National Philharmonic Hall, Warsaw, on the eve of the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth, is one of untrammelled joy.

I suppose it was only right that the programme should consist of some of the Polish national composer’s best-known works, but the first half is notable for its conservative, even mundane, views of the Fantasie and “Funeral March” Sonata (the latter given without its first-movement repeat). The tempi are cautious, the emotions cool. Barenboim seems an almost diffident figure compared to the one conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in an inspired performance of Brahms’s First Symphony recently shown on television. By the second half, however, he has warmed to his task. The Barcarolle and sequence of three Waltzes are quite beguiling, the F major and C sharp minor works presented as touching short stories rather than athletic events (Op 64 No 2 reminded me of Rosenthal’s magical 1929 recording). A change to the enharmonic major leads to the Berceuse for more drawing-room intimacy and, not before time, a change of temperature with a magnificent and genuinely impassioned account of the A flat major Polonaise.

The neat, unfussy direction makes the film a pleasure to watch. I can’t say the same about reading the liner-notes, which alternate between the unfathomable and the pretentious.