These musicians of rare versatility perform regularly as a duo. Bringing this successful partnership so tangibly into the listening room with a technically excellent recording doesn’t disguise a certain steeliness in van Keulen’s tone. In the relatively affable Second Sonata Vadim Repin is sweeter and warmer, his consistent old-school vibrato combining with old-fashioned generosity of expression. One of relatively few pianists to have recorded the work in both formats, Brautigam sounds plain beside Boris Berezovsky, Repin’s idiomatic partner. The bleak and ambivalent First Sonata, placed second, receives a taut, carefully thought-out reading from the Dutch duo without the extremes of tempo and dynamic favoured elsewhere. The soloist’s extraordinary passage of muted scales (likened by Prokofiev to the sound of the wind in a graveyard) wraps itself with exquisite poise about the foregrounded piano chords – typically conscientious playing which, for me, lacks the nth degree of emotional candour. The Mélodies make for a gentler encore.

As for the competition, Prokofiev’s three works for this combination inspire very different brands of music-making. Where James Ehnes and Wendy Chen offer easy lyricism, Gidon Kremer and Martha Argerich seem exhaustingly hyperactive. The sonatas at least were once closely identified with Oistrakh’s powerful singing tone and air of nobility. Sadly you’ll not find his best-sounding renditions coupled together. Even Repin and Berezovsky are now subsumed within a 10-disc boxed set. Those who favour sensibly conceived programmes in physical format could do a great deal worse than the present disc even if Prokofiev needs to smile more than these artists allow.