It’s hard not to be a bit sad for Wigmore Hall Live that they didn’t get this one but it’s hardly surprising that DG wanted to keep it for themselves, even if it has taken almost two years for them to put it out: such technical perfection could hardly have been created with day upon day and take upon take in the studio, at the same time as retaining and transferring the intimacy of a live performance on to disc. It’s an intimacy not only to be had from the knowledge that this is an all-but-single-take disc and that the listener is hearing what those lucky people were hearing in the room in January 2012 but from the way Meneses and Pires play together: the reciprocity between them feels intuitive at the same time as being grounded in familiarity.

The Arpeggione Sonata, although taken relatively slowly, provides a joyful impression of Schubert trying to cheer himself up through the final stages of his illness, and with that comes a poignancy less easily anticipated in more morose (if faster, particularly in the Adagio) recordings of the piece. There are, in fact, several unexpected tempi on this recording, all of which increase the intensity of the relationship between cello and piano – a balance that works particularly well in the Brahms sonata, where the cello is never subsumed by the piano, and the cello equally never assumes the lead role. It is a programme perfectly structured for a soloist such as Pires in an accompanying role, and the highlight of the disc is the first of Brahms’s Op 117 Intermezzos, which she presents as a lullaby of utterly perfect proportions.