This is another landmark in the Chandos Berkeley Edition but, even more, it offers some of the finest piano music by any British composer. Lennox Berkeley was absolutely at one with the piano, his own instrument, and his keyboard solos, duets and concertos are at the summit of his achievement.

Many young pianists have tackled the Six Preludes (two rather hard to play) and there are two other recordings of the Sonata (1945) which Malcolm Williamson justifiably called ‘an absolutely faultless, stupefying masterpiece with not a bad note in it’. Both earlier recordings are sympathetic but Margaret Fingerhut has greater authority and is better recorded. She brings a wonderfully rapt pianissimo to the spiritual slow movement of the Sonata; effortlessly glittering passagework in the scherzo textures; and no exaggeration in rubato.

I have known these pieces for more than 50 years and can confirm that every move she makes is utterly musical and idiomatic. The melodies are allowed to speak for themselves in the great pianistic tradition stretching from Mozart to Ravel. Nobody else could have written this richly rewarding music and these performances confirm Fingerhut as an outstanding executant.

Michael is represented by a single early work from the 1970s based on the Wilfred Owen poem, familiar from his godfather Britten’s War Requiem. It’s atmospheric and imaginatively conveyed here. The piano sound is bright in forte, perfect in pianissimo and the ambience suits the music.