There have been three CDs devoted to Kempff in the BBC Legends series and this one will, I think, be the last. It has been a rich harvest: all are valuable as documents of what he sounded like towards the end of his Indian summer. Does he still need special pleading? I would hope not, but I guess that what he produced, then and earlier, would not nowadays be described as ‘exciting’ playing. He was never disposed to virtuoso self-representation. Yet the essentially lyrical, intimate style of performance is not circumscribed. Alfred Brendel has spoken of Kempff’s sound and the luminosity which ‘set it apart from anybody else’s: it shines in my memory’, but the sound had amplitude and was vital through a wide dynamic range. What one hears here is certainly not the work of a miniaturist – the sonority has easy access to strong statements. Much of the eloquence has to do with the way Kempff gives breath to the phrases as a good singer would shape and support them.

Always there is that feeling for a natural rhetoric, a perfectly judged tone of voice, allied to such firmness of rhythm and ease in getting from one thing to another. Granted some unevenness, most of the Schubert and Brahms here is exemplary. Kempff could give the impression of doing little but missing nothing. It is playing which grows on you, if you respond to it, and it wears well. The other day I fancied listening again to the first of the Brahms Ballades, but there was no question of stopping and I went on to the end.

The Schumann G minor Sonata is less satisfying, the agitation of its surface not always well controlled. There are no whirlwinds, no real prestos, no thrill of the chase, and in the outer movements you sense Kempff’s reluctance to push the boat out. The finale really needs to be a bit faster. He was variable, but elsewhere on this CD there is enough of him to make one understand why Brendel once said that ‘at his best he plays more beautifully than any of us’.