Oh. My. Word. This is, I think, an important recording, not merely because it captures some of the most astonishing piano-playing you will ever hear but because it places Marc-André Hamelin front and centre as one of the foremost pianist-composers of the day, taking up the long-neglected baton once held by the likes of Rachmaninov, Earl Wild, Busoni and Godowsky.

Like the latter two, he is at his best (and most memorable) as a composer inspired by the music of others; also like them, he is no melodist in the Rachmaninov class. Hamelin is more interested in exploring the expressive potential of the keyboard, new textures and combinations. He does this with clear, sophisticated and sometimes humorous references to the plethora of past masters whose works he has so assiduously championed. Along the way you can hear in different ways his debt to Alkan and Godowsky (of course), Morton Feldman, William Bolcom, Nikolai Kapustin and no doubt several others that are more mischievously concealed. Yet by some mysterious osmotic process it all sounds recognisably, even unmistakably, ‘Hamelinesque’.

He begins with his Variations on a Theme of Paganini, the same celebrated theme that has attracted Liszt, Brahms, Rachmaninov, Ignaz Friedman, Mark Hambourg, Lutosławski and many others. It’s the earliest work here (2011) and on the occasions I have heard him play the piece live it has brought the house down, just as Horowitz used to with his Carmen Variations, child’s play compared with the immense technical challenges Hamelin has set himself and dispatched with breathtaking élan. A modern classic already. The programme is bookended with a second dazzling showpiece, his Toccata on L’homme armé (based on the familiar 15th-century Burgundian song, much used by composers over the centuries) commissioned for the 2017 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Another work likely to (eventually) enter the regular piano repertoire.

Also of note are the six-movement Suite à l’ancienne from 2019, ending in a boisterous and entertaining Gigue, and the Pavane variée (2014), based on another ancient French chanson which many will know from its use in Warlock’s Capriol Suite, the original theme played with sublime simplicity, and followed by nine inventive and imaginative variations. In these and the tormented three-movement relentlessly aggressive Chaconne (2013), Hamelin stretches the limits of tonality with a highly idiosyncratic use of tone clusters, dissonance and other complex textures without, however, fully abandoning tonality. Those who think the Canadian habitually on the emotionally cool side may have to reconsider. By contrast, the 10-plus minutes of the 2013 Barcarolle barely rise above a ppp whisper, showing Hamelin’s miraculous colouring skills and touch (was that elusive Part 4, though, really necessary?). It is all music of high seriousness yet coloured with his playful trademark Italian directions such as vigorosamente, molto scandito and ondeggiando (I suspect the influence of Medtner here). Not everything appealed. I doubt if My Feelings About Chocolate or Meditation on Laura (David Raksin’s theme for the eponymous 1944 film) will find a wide audience, while I found the brief Variation diabellique sur des thèmes de Beethoven (2020) rather pointless.

But that subjective view, I’m aware, misses the point. How fortunate we are that Hamelin signed with a record label that not only allows him to record whatever he wants but positively encourages him to do so. (Think what we missed of Rachmaninov because of RCA.) Here is piano-playing of such an exalted standard I seriously wonder if anything comparable exists on record. I wait impatiently for a Hamelin piano concerto.