These performances date from 1957 and 1991‚ but Cherkassky’s delight in difference‚ his love of impish slants‚ voicings and perspectives‚ remains constant over the 34­year gap. This Puck of the keyboard wheedles and harasses‚ chivvies and coaxes his colleagues‚ leading them a merry dance and leaving them to cling on to his kaleidoscopic argument as best they can. The Rachmaninov commences in sombre style but Cherkassky’s mischievous voicing is already a warning to his conductors of what is to follow. At 4'02" he squeezes every ounce out of Rachmaninov’s Slavonic melancholy yet later chomps through the tempo precedente with a happy disregard for the composer’s un poco più mosso marking (the reverse of Gilels’ haunting rumination at this point). There is a coy withdrawal at 8'34" in the composer’s thundering reaffirmation of his opening rhythm leaving the orchestra stranded and uncertain‚ but an unabashed delight in the cadenza (the lighter more silvery one of the two) where‚ left on his own‚ he is free to indulge his fun and fancy­free approach to the full. You will hardly be reminded of dark pearls flung on velvet at his first entry in the Intermezzo‚ where there is little beyond a withdrawn and oddly perverse alternative‚ and in the stamping subject at 1'34" in the finale Cherkassky’s cutting off of Rachmaninov’s minims makes his gesture more elfin than heroic. There are‚ of course‚ many magical and felicitous moments (the glistening leggiero ascent at 8'08" in the finale) but the wildly and unintentionally syncopated free­for­all at the end is chaotic. Out­and­out Cherkassky fans will have to have this alternately tipsy and affecting performance‚ this capricious rather than stable commentary‚ but there is no comparison with great recordings by Horowitz‚ Cliburn‚ Gilels‚ Argerich and Volodos. Cherkassky’s Prokofiev tells the same bewildering tale‚ alternately provoking and delectable but too often reducing this powerful and malignant score to the level of caricature. Listening once more to the likes of Gutiérrez and Ashkenazy makes you realise that‚ in the words of the American poet‚ Marianne Moore‚ ‘there is something beyond this fiddle’.