I thought this would be a nil nisi bonum appreciation of a sorely missed artist who commanded wide respect among his colleagues and admiring affection from his audiences. And so it proves. But in fact it’s a more pleasurable task than that. Freire’s Decca producer for many years, Dominic Fyfe, has here assembled solos previously only available as bonus tracks, alongside four concertos taken from German radio broadcasts and, most treasurable of all, three solos from 2014 sessions in Berlin that were mainly devoted to Beethoven’s Op 111. Fyfe also supplies an affectionate and revealing essay – by no means as mawkish as the title ‘Unshed Tears’ might suggest – giving the inside story of how those Berlin sessions went.

The three 2014 solos immediately draw us in. Freire’s signature encore, the Gluck/Sgambati Mélodie, aka ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’, is if anything touched with even more delicious grace than on his 2019 disc of ‘Encores’ (1/20), and Beethoven’s Andante favori is as joyous in its subtlety as the Bach/Hess Jesu, Joy is in its soothing flow. For me, these three stay in the mind longer than the other solos, which themselves are never less than distinguished.

In general the radio recordings suffer from indifferent balance and orchestral playing. The Beethoven G major has the piano so far forward that crucial lines are frequently obscured (though I could wish that were true of the sour-toned oboe). In the Bartók the orchestra is so recessed it’s as though the soloist is captured in full colour and the rest only in black and white; in any case the performance lacks a degree of bite in the outer movements and tension in the central Andante.

The opening of the Beethoven may not quite have the magic promised by the preceding solos. But thereafter there is so much musical wisdom in Freire’s playing, and in the finale such delicious hide-and-seek delicacy, that I almost didn’t notice the balance issues. Saint-Saëns’s lumbering cadenzas are also worth hearing, though perhaps not more than once.

In the Brahms B flat it’s once again Freire’s finale that I took most delight in, this time for his uncanny ability to commute between relaxed geniality and puckish ebullience, but also for the way the orchestra catches the shifts of mood. The first movement gets off to a slightly nervy start but soon settles, and the way the clouds disperse and the sun shines through at the main return is as beautifully judged as any I have heard. In the middle movements there is little to complain of and much to revel in, especially in terms of fluency and expressive ebb and flow. There again, some threadbare patches in the orchestral texture preclude a more urgent recommendation.

A wonderfully subtle account of the Brahms D major Intermezzo, its 2008 recording quality slightly more diffuse than the 2014 solos that open the compilation, concludes an experience that is somehow much more than the sum of its diverse parts.