We begin in buoyant mood with Op 14 No 1, its opening movement dispatched with aplomb; Biss’s second movement is taken at a true Allegretto, though Goode, a touch slower, reveals more anguish. The finale combines buoyancy with just a touch of grit, the semiquaver running scales immaculately managed. There’s a lot to admire in Op 27 No 1 as well, not least Biss’s overall pacing, though Goode and Bavouzet have more fun in the closing Allegro vivace.

That Biss has thought long and hard about Op 106 is abundantly clear, as he writes: ‘Trying to describe the terrible power of this music is an exercise in frustration.’ But there’s no sense of frustration as he launches powerfully into the fortissimo opening phrases. Time and again in this performance we’re reminded of the many quieter dynamics within the sonata’s span. There are as many ways of reading this piece as there are pianists – Levit sets off at an almost suicidally fast pace; Gilels, spacious by comparison, explores the extremes of what is musically possible; while Osborne really rips into the opening with a devil-may-care aplomb. Common to all three is a sense of being right at the edge of what is possible, compared to which Biss sounds a little too controlled. In the finest performances even its quietest moments have a drive, whereas in this new recording the tension can sag a little (sample from 8'17" in the first movement, where the delicate detail is beautifully observed but it sits back too much, the subsequent build-up not quite convincing). The close of the movement is, in Osborne’s hands, ear-bendingly powerful, compared to which Biss sounds a touch contained. The minuscule Scherzo needs a greater rawness, to my mind, such as that conveyed by Guy in his second recording (2006). Biss soothes the Scherzo’s angst with a wonderfully rhetorical slow movement, making you abundantly aware of its ebb and flow. Yet Levit (like Biss relatively fast) imbues the music with even more inevitability, while Gilels, hugely spacious, uncovers its profundity as few others can. But perhaps my biggest quibble is with the finale itself, Biss’s fugue favouring clarity over power and ending up sounding relatively lightweight. This may be to your taste but I missed the sheer strength of will evident in the hair-raising accounts by Levit and Osborne.