The two pianists could not be more different. Alexander Gavrylyuk (b1984 in Ukraine) is a veteran of the competition circuit. And it shows. He plays like someone who has passed his driving test with top marks but has yet to acquire his own way of handling a car. After an irritatingly episodic Toccata and Fugue in D minor and earnest accounts of K576 and D664, Gavrylyuk enters home territory with full-blooded performances of Rachmaninov’s Op 39 Etudes-tableaux despite interminable gaps between each one. He should avoid Horowitz territory (the Moszkowski étude) until he’s been to charm school. Islamey is impressively articulated and powerfully delivered. The audience whoops – as they do after the Volodos paraphrase of Rondo alla turca, for which see Moszkowski and Balakirev above.

Cuban virtuoso Jorge Luis Prats (b1956) is an old-fashioned romantic. Unlike young Gavrylyuk where everything is a challenge to overcome, Prats sees the keyboard and all he plays as friends. Everything is so natural and economical that he is a pleasure to watch, let alone hear. I’ve rarely seen anyone look so comfortable seated at a piano. Any problems have been sorted out long ago, so much so that after a while it is easy to take his fabulous technique and palette of tonal colours for granted.

One can argue over the sonority he chooses for the Bach/Liszt Prelude and Fugue and suggest it is a little dogged but Scriabin’s wonderful and unjustly neglected Op 11 Preludes are beautifully sculpted. Some will prefer the greater intensity and refinement that Pogorelich and Argerich inter alia bring to Gaspard but Prats offers his own convincing alternative view. “Scarbo” and La valse, which follows, are electrifying pianistic feats. Before them comes a selection of delightful Gottschalkian Cuban Dances by Louis Moreau’s pupil Ignacio Cervantes (1847-1905) in which Prats displays another side of his armoury, also evident in the encores which open with one of his party pieces, his own version of Lecuona’s Mazurka. If you have never heard delicate glissandi in thirds, sixths and triads, now’s your chance. The bonus is an engaging if discursive hour-long chat with Prats at the piano interviewed by a puzzlingly faceless Frank Cooper.