No pianist played closer to the edge than Vladimir Horowitz. And here, in this invaluable reissue of performances dating from 1949‑57, you are once more made aware of that elemental violence and caprice that could leave his audiences in a state of stupefaction, provoked and seduced by his charismatic force and wicked ways. For some he was “a master of musical distortion” (Virgil Thomson); and lovers of Rubinstein’s patrician elegance, Lipatti’s regality or Arrau’s earnest philosophising in Chopin should steer clear. Indeed, those of a cautious or conservative nature will run for cover in the face of such a wily and elemental assault. Here, the Barcarolle’s audacious harmonic shifts are tweaked and underlined, the build-up to the Fourth Ballade’s final pages turned into a cataclysmic uproar. Again, there are those (the august authors of The Record Guide) who felt that Horowitz’s way with the Second Sonata reduces great music “to the level of a Victorian melodrama”. But such comments surely miss the point. Horowitz was always Horowitz and never more so than on this disc where his Chopin is “like a fireball exploding” (Rudolf Serkin). A previously unavailable performance of the Fourth Ballade provides a fascinating addition even if the pianist’s thunder and lightning is muted by the 1949 sound.

Horowitz once told me that he could play like an angel but he was unapologetically of the devil’s party, and all lovers of ultra-virtuosity and pianistic sorcery will have to have this.