How fascinating and instructive to return to legendary performances from the past, to find confirmation of greatness here, a lessening of enthusiasm there, to raise or lower an eyebrow. Here is a reminder and a remembrance of a matchless idiosyncrasy and mastery, particularly when discs dating from 1925-42 are so superbly remastered by Ward Marston (a vast improvement on RCA’s long-deleted 10-disc set of the complete recordings). Try this great pianist in Chopin’s E flat Nocturne, Op 9 No 2, played in the style of the greatest Russian singers, with a melting cantabile and with a freedom and rubato that can make even the ever-elfin Cherkassky sound sober by comparison. The Op 64 Waltz in A flat dances with a gossamer lightness while the Third Ballade seems improvised on the spot. Today, Rachmaninov’s operatic treatment of the Funeral March from the Second Sonata (his explosive return of the theme after the central Elysium) and his “winds whistling over graveyards” alternative to Chopin’s prescribed sotto voce in the finale may seem over-free, aberrations to be frowned on in our more puritan times. Yet even here you are conscious of a fierce musical integrity, one that scorns mere cleverness or difference for its own sake. The Scherzo from the same sonata has all of Rachmaninov’s astonishing propulsion and pungent rhythmic drive; and in the final pages of Schumann’s Carnaval the dancers are whirled into near oblivion. Rachmaninov could be gruff, tender, mordant (he includes “Sphinxes”, written in order to be ignored), dazzling, confiding and so much more. This is a superb first volume in what promises to be an invaluable series.