Lars Vogt is a pianist I admire greatly, though Chopin is not a composer with whom I’d readily associate him. In the booklet interview the pianist confides, ‘I’ve always loved Chopin, albeit somewhat from a distance’. The only piece which has featured consistently in his recitals is the C sharp minor Nocturne, Op posth, and this is one of the best things here – beautiful and quite unselfconscious. Elsewhere, though, doubts arise.

The First Ballade sets the scene: it’s a little too ponderous and climaxes sound a touch laboured, rather than emerging inevitably from the music as they do with Zimerman or, even more strikingly, Argerich in her unfettered 1959 radio recording. It’s almost as if Vogt has spent too much time thinking about this music rather than living it, so it can come across as over-intellectualised. There are times in the Nocturnes where I wanted more bel canto and he lacks the sense of inevitability that you find with Pires, particularly in the first of Op 9, though the second of the set is more convincing.

The First Scherzo doesn’t lack for rhetoric, particularly in the fearsome closing moments; but, compared to Pogorelich (admittedly extreme) or Rubinstein, Vogt seems somewhat buttoned-up. As for the Sonata, right from the opening I hanker after a greater sense of drive. Though Vogt is eager to bring out the work’s rapt moments, the Scherzo is tame indeed compared to Rachmaninov (but then so is everyone else) or, among modern-day pianists, Freire. And though you can make out every note in the finale, which is more than can be said for Rachmaninov, it lacks the sinister edge of Hamelin and, supremely, Cortot.

I’m sorry not to be more enthusiastic about this: it’s not that Chopin and Vogt are ill-matched but more that the relationship between pianist and composer needs time to mature.