Here is a noble tribute to a noble pianist. Gina Bachauer (1913-76) was an artist whose exultant virtuosity and unswerving musical honesty became one of music’s legends. Fittingly described by Barbirolli as ‘glorious Gina’, her New York debut in 1950 was heard by Myra Hess who, although markedly different in style and repertoire, saw her as her natural heir, a pianist in the grandest of grand traditions. How enterprising, then, that APR has gathered together Bachauer’s early HMV recordings, in which her playing is of such heroic dimensions. What daunting and superb authority in the Bach-Busoni Toccata, Adagio and Fugue (romantically hyphenated Bach was central to Bachauer’s repertoire), the fugue in particular thrown off with an impeturbable, full-toned splendour that is pure Bachauer.

Her opening to Liszt’s Funérailles may be fast-flowing for adagio but the line and direction are inexorable, and the final pages of the Hungarian Rhapsody No 12 have pulverising strength and tonal opulence. In Mozart’s Coronation Concerto she and her husband Alec Sherman are content to plough a straight but musicianly furrow. Less stylishly committed than such eminent Mozartians as, say, Brendel or Perahia, their performance is nonethless exceptionally fluent and satisfying. Finally, there’s Busoni’s rarely heard arrangement of Liszt’s Rapsodie espagnole complete with braying orchestration and much added, brilliantly pianistic tracery. Bachauer is once more in her element and it would be hard to imagine this romantic curio given with greater brio and facility.

Here then is evidence that for Gina Bachauer music was ‘like life itself. It illuminates every day from its opening.’ The recordings capture much of this artist’s immense dynamic range and Bryan Crimp’s accompanying essay lovingly charts a truly charismatic career.