If I were allowed a two-word review of this disc, it would read as follows: buy it. But then, as a long-term admirer of Marc-André Hamelin, you would expect me to write that. Except that I think this new release is among the very best of all the recordings he has given us, returning, as he does, to the kind of repertoire in which he made his name and in which he is sui generis. Just turned 59, the fabulous dexterity, the nonchalant dispatch of the most challenging writing and the ability to convey with the most economic means the sheer physical joy of playing this music are still with him.

Here, though, he appears to have added to his formidable arsenal. As expected, he conjures up a rich palette of tonal colours throughout, but to particularly bewitching effect in the two Thalberg fantasies where in places as many as four distinct voices are held separately within the same spectrum. The execution is so incredibly neat and well ordered, and yet sounds completely spontaneous, like an inspired improvisation. And if you are one of those who think Hamelin is too cerebral and emotionally cool, then this will disabuse you. I have never heard him play fff passages with such unbridled energy and vehemence. This is a master pianist at the height of his powers.

This cannily chosen programme gives Liszt and Thalberg the chance to shine at their individual best, with Hexaméron allowing us to hear them side by side in a compendium of contemporary Parisian piano styles. (Hyperion usefully divides the work into nine tracks to enable the listener to easily follow the sequence of variations by Thalberg, Pixis, Herz, Czerny, Chopin and Liszt himself.) There are too many highlights on this outstanding disc to list individually following this barnstorming opening, though the Don Pasquale fantasy is as sprightly as Earl Wild’s famous recording (Vanguard, 11/68, 8/92) and Hamelin’s own live performance at Husum in 1994 (Danacord, 4/97), while the Norma fantasy outstrips Hamelin’s earlier recording (Music & Arts, 1992). The final section of the Moses fantasy (first encountered on Raymond Lewenthal’s stunning but sonically inferior 1975 Angel recording) left me sitting there grinning like an idiot: just when you think all possibilities of Thalberg’s famous three-hands effect have been exhausted, he adds another (his audiences used to stand on their chairs to see how it was done). Here, Hamelin’s leggiero hemidemisemiquaver arpeggios are of the kind that, even if you had followed your mother’s advice and practised harder, you would never equal. Not in a million years.

In all this, he has been laudably supported by recording engineer Arne Akselberg in Berlin’s Teldex Studio with his longtime producer Andrew Keener. As I said, buy it!