Fukuma’s performances invite a mixed response: able at one level but circumscribed at another. There is something of the studio in the Fantaisie-Impromptu where, while one welcomes his lack of exaggeration or idiosyncrasy, there is a lack of the sort of personal touch that can make familiar pages spring into renewed life. In the First Ballade, too, an element of caution mitigates against a full recreative blaze, while the Op 22 Polonaise (after a finely poised Andante spianato) lacks the joyful rhythmic resilience of Rubinstein (a cruel comparison) or, indeed, of 22-year-old Benjamin Grosvenor. The Second Ballade’s storms are given with exceptional brilliance but there is a lack of lyrical intensity in the C minor Nocturne, with its daringly original cannonade of octaves.

Hortus’s sound lacks the range of the finest recordings and, for all their many qualities, Fukuma’s Chopin Ballades hardly stand comparison with recordings by Zimerman and Perahia, with their fully rather than partially realised readings.