Though Claudio Arrau was royally served by his record companies, he had an uneasy relationship with studio recording and it with him. Piano recording is a cheek-by-jowl affair but Arrau’s sound – richly caparisoned, with an astonishing ability to ‘carry’ to the furthest seat – was fashioned in the great 19th-century halls and recital rooms. Another problem was his way with rhythm and phrasing. A pianist who, as someone said of Liszt, ‘does not just play the piano but tells at it’, he was best heard in real time in a real hall where sound and rhythm have time to live, breathe and adjust one to the other.

This recital of late Beethoven, played with the anguished grandeur that was Arrau’s trademark, was made in a community hall in New York in December 1975. I have never been to the 92nd Street Y and since Arrau’s long-serving assistant Friede Rothe died recently (the CD is dedicated to her memory), I can’t ask her about it. To judge by the recording, it’s a fairly informal place. Op 110 rather suffers from this. It opens to a counterpoint of clattering coins and the lead-up to the arioso dolente is a good deal disrupted by noises off.

The microphone-bearer and his or her immediate neighbours feature a certain amount but the piano sound is well enough focused and has been admirably remastered by Bryan Crimp. There isn’t much ‘middle’ to the image but that is not without interest since it allows us to hear with particular clarity the astonishing power of Arrau’s left hand – how it balances the right hand rather than merely colouring and complementing it. Op 109 is, even by Arrau’s standards, something of a revelation. He was 72 at the time of the recital. It is not note-perfect, which doesn’t bother me, though a rough patch in the Scherzo of Op 110 clearly bothered him.

I am pleased Appian has released the recital. The rackety setting makes for an un-Arrau-like context yet the real winner is Beethoven. In the 1965 studio recordings we have performances of exemplary pedigree, finely manicured. In New York we have a 70-minute switchback ride from here to eternity and back again. I have no doubt which Beethoven would have preferred.