It is not always a good sign that, when listening to a new recording of familiar music for review purposes, one reaches for the score within the first minute. Yes – I was right: the first Prelude is marked agitato. The reason for checking this is that Richard-Hamelin’s opening C major salvo – a prelude to the Preludes, if you like – is, rather than agitated, more a reluctant debutante dragged out to a party against her will. The A minor Prelude that follows sounds like ‘Bydło’ from Mussorgsky’s Pictures, its ‘grotesque and discordant harmonies’ (Huneker) more striking than usual. No 3 – the clouds lift, its babbling semiquavers dispatched with exemplary clarity. The miniature masterpiece that is No 4 in E minor (played on the organ at Chopin’s funeral by Lefébure-Wély) follows – and already some characteristics of the pianist’s view of the cycle have emerged.

In the hands of earlier pianists such as Cortot (1926) and Moiseiwitsch (1949), the babbling semiquavers of No 3 and repeated left-hand pattern in No 4, though well-articulated, are secondary to the melodies in the left hand and right hand respectively. Richard-Hamelin gives equal importance to both. Everything is more deliberate, less liberated. Another difference: the piano tone is bright, the acoustic verging on the empty-assembly-hall; the elderly mono sound, conversely, lends a more mellow hue to proceedings – and acres more charm. Where Richard-Hamelin is particularly good is in the more forthright numbers – the whirlwind No 16, the declamatory F minor (No 18) and especially the concluding D minor Prelude, with its last three bottom D minims superbly hammered out fff with relish.

After the Preludes, Richard-Hamelin makes their perhaps surprising companion the Andante spianato and Grande Polonaise brillante. The solo version is heard not so frequently that one has become tired of hearing it – and certainly not in such a poised, beautifully phrased, judiciously paced Andante as here or with such a sparkling, magisterial account of the Polonaise, its improvisatory filigree runs tossed off with the fluency of an Art Tatum. It is again an fff final bar that wraps up the performance which, for this listener, is the undoubted highlight of the disc.