This invaluable reissue of discs dating from 1952‑53 is a reminder of Jorge Bolet’s early stature. The first-ever recording of Prokofiev’s malignant, ferociously demanding Second Concerto is of so much more than documentary interest. For, even with a regrettable cut at the end of the first-movement cadenza/development, nothing can dim one’s sense of Bolet’s massive and unswerving authority, a quality at once lyrical and magisterial. A sombre and unsmiling giant of the piano (‘well, I’m not Liberace’), he allows nothing to tempt him into histrionics or empty display.

A true aristocrat of the keyboard, his warmth and humanity strike you at every turn, as well as a communicative ardour less pronounced in many of his later, elder-statesman recordings for Decca. Hear him in Moszkowski’s ‘En automne’ for that deep-into-the-keys, straight-from-the-shoulder virtuosity (for Gilels he was ‘the only American pianist’), or in his formidably imposing way with Liszt’s ‘Funérailles’, a reading that brought back memories of his performance at the Proms given in memory of Clifford Curzon.

There is more of ‘that colossal workman of the keyboard’ than Cortot’s champagne sparkle in Saint-Saëns’s Etude ‘en forme de valse’ but in Chopin’s Four Scherzos everything is at the service of the music, backed by a thrilling if unostentatious mastery. An evocative brilliance characterises his visit to Spain (Falla, Granados and Albéniz) and how he relishes his all-too-brief memory of his native Cuba (Lecuona). APR’s transfers are excellent but the accompanying essay, with its emphasis on Bolet’s belated recognition and his ups and downs (mainly downs), fails to celebrate his first quality: a missed opportunity.