This disc, devoted to Rachmaninov, remembers Colin Horsley, a pianist of the utmost distinction. A New Zealander by birth, he left for London at the age of 18. Those who found his playing ‘reticent’ surely mistook his immaculate taste and fluency for a reserve far remote from an alternately delicate and powerful emotional fervour that could take you to the very heart of Rachmaninov’s all-Russian and aristocratic nature. All these performances are graced with a fleet and unforced quality that tell a superior story to other more blistering and aggressive accounts. His pianistic ease and facility allow him many subtle and surprising inflections that quietly illuminate a whole Prelude.

In his selection of transcriptions, his way with the Scherzo from Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is as scintillating as it is unassuming, its intricacy resolved in a manner that recalls Moiseiwitsch’s legendary recording. Time and again he captures your attention by stealth rather than violence, though his dizzying acceleration to the climax of the ultra-demanding E minor Prelude from Op 32 reminds you not only of a flawless technique but a sense, too, of the menace that can engulf even the composer’s most gentle and melancholic musings.

Suave and debonair (Horsley’s appearance would have fitted perfectly into a Noël Coward play), he is a reminder of a distant time when pianists were less inclined to force the issue in a desperate bid for attention. Horsley was the most civilised of pianists and it is a thousand pities that EMI never recorded a complete cycle of the Preludes or his celebrated performances of the Second and Third Concertos and the Paganini Rhapsody. I am more than grateful for Atoll’s issue and for their sound, which is as warm and engaging as the playing.