Volume 7 of recordings dating from 1928-48 presents Moiseiwitsch in the Russian repertoire so close to his heart, performed with a matchless grace and fluency. Most civilised of pianists, he invariably took even the most strenuous pages by stealth rather than storm, leaving you enchanted and refreshed rather than bull-dozed into submission.

Never a purist or arid academic, he could tamper with the text, adding a mischievous twinkle to bars that the composer somehow forgot to revise (why not sky the conclusions of the Prokofiev Suggestion diabolique or the Rachmaninov E minor Moment Musicaux high above the original, or further spice an already audacious harmony, if you feel like it?). A born aristocrat of the keyboard, he could make even the most garish pages (in the Khachaturian Toccata) glow with an air of distinction, and few other pianists had such a subtle sense of poetic caprice and innuendo. Where Horowitz is vivid and volatile in Kabalevsky’s Third Sonata, Moiseiwitsch is delicate and insinuating; and his Medtner selection, including the Round Dance for piano duet, in which he is joined by the composer, has a matchless poetic vitality.

Rachmaninov, his other great friend and compatriot, also benefits from his silken caress (the C sharp minor Prelude is so imaginatively recreated that it never remains just the Rachmaninov Prelude) and how extraordinary to hear the E minor Moment musical’s storming rhetoric transcended by an understatement that, paradoxically, recreates so much more of its sinister momentum. The same is true of the 1928 recording of the Suggestion diabolique (the later 1950 version has already appeared in Vol 6), and how enterprising of Naxos to give us two versions of Rachmaninov’s great B minor Prelude (the second even more enthralling than the first). Ward Marston’s transfers crown an issue that reminds us of artistry as consummate as it is endearing, and all this at super-bargain price.