The Verbier Festival gave Martha Argerich carte blanche to invite her best friends to perform with her for one night only in 2007, and this, eight years later, is the souvenir double album, as DG begins to open up its Argerich/Verbier archive. The acoustic isn’t as generous as EMI/Warner achieve in Lugano and there is a good helping of audience noise (especially damaging at the outset of ‘Träumerei’). Only Schubert’s Grande Rondeau appears to be new to the Argerich discography. But what a night it must have been!

Argerich, Rachlin and Maisky tear into Beethoven’s Ghost Trio for the sort of performance you’d revisit again and again. Renaud Capuçon abandons his usual sweetness of tone for something altogether more abrasive in Bartók’s First Violin Sonata, even if not quite matching the laser-like focus of Kremer in this music. (There’s only one Gidon Kremer, though, just as there’s only one Renaud Capuçon.) Yuri Bashmet might have demanded a couple of retakes in the Arpeggione Sonata had this been a studio session. And ensemble comes apart just ever so slightly as Argerich accompanies Lang Lang in the Schubert piano-duo rondo. Lang Lang, however, performs better in a scintillating Mother Goose suite. And there’s the added treat of a rare solo outing for the lady herself in Schumann’s Kinderszenen, played with her characteristic improvisatory élan.

There are so many good things to hear here, all given the extra frisson of live performance, that it’s hard to pick a favourite, although mention must be made of Lutosπawski’s Paganini Variations, with Gabriela Montero on first piano. Montero also supplies the encore – an improvisation on ‘Happy Birthday’ for Lily Maisky, in which the scrappy little tune is treated to variations à la mazurka, tango and all manner of other dances. It brings the house down. What a night indeed!