The centenary of the death of Camille Saint-Saëns passed by relatively unnoticed by broadcasters and concert promoters. As far as piano aficionados are concerned, the lack of anniversary recognition is somewhat ameliorated by this imaginative – and ultimately rather extraordinary – set, issued on Cyprien Katsaris’s own label.

Few others can match the breadth of repertoire of the French-Cypriot virtuoso, who seems to embrace all styles and schools with conviction and authenticity in equal measure. But looking down the enticing list of repertoire on these discs, one does raise an eyebrow at the prospect of anyone managing to play Saint-Saëns’s mighty Organ Symphony as a piano solo. That said, Katsaris has a long track record (no pun intended) of playing solo piano versions of major orchestral works, having given us benchmark accounts of all the Beethoven-Liszt symphonies and Hummel’s arrangement of Mozart’s Symphony No 40. Before the symphony, though, there is the little matter of a solo version of The Carnival of the Animals. Katsaris uses, principally, the transcription (not published complete until 1951) made by the publisher Durand’s gifted in-house arranger, Lucien Garban, but throughout augments the score with delicate touches and refinements of his own. It’s a performance that preserves all the wit and caprice of the original chamber score without compromise. Rather delightfully, after stumbling his way through each section of ‘Pianistes’, Katsaris is heard complaining that he can’t play it in English, French, Greek and Japanese.

This is followed by the composer’s own transcriptions of Hymne à Victor Hugo (not one of his best works) and the Bacchanale from Samson et Dalila (which is). After that comes the Symphony. Katsaris bases his performance on the resourceful transcription by the American musicologist Peter Goetschius (1853-1943), switching to an arrangement by the French composer Gustave Samazeuilh (1877-1967) for the Adagio movement. Again, Katsaris makes many modifications of his own – doubling octaves where appropriate and, most noticeably, playing the many string and woodwind staccato passages (for example, the opening treatment of the first movement’s first subject) with machine-gun repeated notes – far harder to achieve than the transcriber’s octave tremolos, and far more effective. The whole enterprise is a jaw-dropping tour de force similar to the experience of listening to one of Alkan’s extended and more outlandish creations. Saint-Saëns must surely have known the older master’s work.

On disc 2 we have Bizet’s transcription of the Second (G minor) Concerto, previously recorded by Harold Bauer on a piano roll back in the day (it appeared on Everest LP X-911) and, augmented but somewhat gabbled, in 1988 by Nikolai Petrov (Olympia). Once more, Katsaris adds orchestral figures that even as accomplished a virtuoso as Bizet omitted, such as the codas to the Scherzo and the finale, where passagework for two hands (in the original and in Bizet) is played by Katsaris with one hand, allowing him to add the orchestral accompaniment in the other.

Lack of space precludes me extolling the rest of the items on this disc – unlike the foregoing, they have been recorded by several others – because the third disc is, in some respects, the most remarkable USP of the box-set. This is a piano version by Léon Roques of the score for L’assassinat du duc de Guise, the first film for which music was specially commissioned from a major composer (originally scored for piano, harmonium, flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn and strings). The extensive and fascinating 39-page booklet by Loïc Serrurier and Melissa Arnaud (in English, French and German) tells us that the premiere was at the Salle Charras on November 17, 1908, in the presence of Saint-Saëns. What a bonus, then, to include a DVD of the 17-minute film, in a new HD restoration print with Katsaris as silent-movie pianist.

Saint-Saëns is seen by some in the classical music hierarchy as a second-rate composer. Katsaris, likewise, because of his amazing facility, is often dismissed as a lightweight. Well, here the two meet in perfect harmony to provide incontrovertible evidence that such views simply don’t hold water. This handsomely produced and recorded release is one of my recordings of the year, and another feather in the cap of a remarkable musician – and entrepreneur.