This invaluable two-CD album of Janáček’s complete piano music includes a short and personal essay by Martino Tirimo. There he tells us ‘there is no other musical expression like Janáček’s. When you hear it you recognise it. It is a testimony to his greatness.’ He continues: ‘I can’t help but love it.’ This is touchingly expressed and yet it is difficult to imagine what it must be like to be immersed in such a special and challenging project. Challenging because, like much of Mozart or the openings of Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto and Chopin’s Fourth Ballade, to take some random examples, there is proof that simple things are the most demanding. More subjectively, and like late Fauré (his Seventh Prelude’s stammering progression) or Brahms (the E flat minor Intermezzo from Op 118), there is an expression of pain that little can assuage.

What is entirely distinctive, however, is that there is more bitterness than sweetness expressed with rare economy. Much of Janáček’s writing recreates a quiet and despairing world – though with angry interjections – almost too private for articulation and with significant biographical associations. The two-movement Sonata is of a frightening candour, its tragic expression a lament for the death of a Czech worker killed in a demonstration but also a reminder of Janáček’s deeply troubled state of mind. Even the Three Moravian Dances have a forced, offbeat quality, while On an Overgrown Path (Part 1) contains titles such as ‘Words Fail, ‘Unutterable Anguish’ and ‘In Tears’, which tell their own tale. Part 2 is perhaps significantly without titles. In the Mists, too, counters the more conventional world of the early Theme and Variations with its sense of a journey from innocence to experience. The spectre of Chopin haunts No 4, while No 5 reminds us of ‘Polnisch’ from Liszt’s Christmas Tree Suite, itself a ghostly memory of Chopin. Finally, Tirimo’s performances could hardly be more scrupulous, sensitive and committed; though I should add that listeners who know a world of isolating grief will find a resonance in page after page of Janáček’s desolating poetry.