All five DVDs celebrate René Martin’s La Roque d’Anthéron Piano Festival, founded in 1980 in the heart and, judging by the players’ perspiration, heat of Provence. Since those palmy days pianists ranging from the celebrated to the unknown have played in an atmosphere of pure enchantment. Given such riches, the choice of films must have been difficult but Martin’s criterion of ‘originality and boldness’ has paid off and solo recitals are complemented by duet and chamber music concerts.

First and formidably there is Elisso Virsaladze, referred to most oddly in Jennifer Lesieur’s vulgar and irrelevant notes as ‘the grande dame of Georgian music’. Her Schumann – highly praised by Richter – provides a vivid interaction between Florestan and Eusebius (Schumann’s fictionalised men of action and dreams), captured in the fiercely ignited start to Kreisleriana, yet she’s eloquent as well as impassioned in every twist of the composer’s pell-mell argument. All the same, her declamation can be relentless and here and in the Prokoviev and Tchaikovsky offerings she sounds tight-lipped and over-intense, remorselessly pressing home her points. All these performances, for all their magisterial force and authority, leave too little space, claustrophobically confining rather than expanding your horizons.

Lesieur, who thinks that Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnets were inspired by the Italian landscape, sounds a bobby-sox note, telling us of ‘this tall young man with the mane of hair’ before celebrating the fact that Frank Braley has opted for a musical rather than scientific career (‘there are plenty of good scientists, good pianists are much rarer’). Yet nothing can mask the quality of Braley’s performances, suitably rapturous in Sonnet 123 (‘I saw on earth angelic grace’), impassioned and improvisatory in No 104. His selection of Debussy Préludes includes a performance of ‘Ce qu’a vu le vent d’Ouest’ (too often an incoherent uproar) where there is ample time for every elemental gesture to make its dramatic point. Braley’s Gershwin, too, is as personal as it is dazzling, evoking a jazz age inseparable from the composer and also conjured by Scott Fitzgerald.

From high jinks to a Schubertiad from Christian Ivaldi and Jean-Claude Pennetier, though I doubt whether the composer and his friends played with anything approaching the expertise of these richly mature, most musicianly artists. Their performance of the great F minor Fantasie, in particular, is a notable triumph, impeccable in both taste and style.

In extreme contrast there is ‘Les pianos de demain’, in which at least five of the six young players suggest much more than mere potential. Iddo Bar-Shai (for Alexis Weissenberg, an ‘artist’ and an ‘original’) has yet to learn that less can be more and his selection of Chopin Mazurkas finds him inflating wistfulness into high tragedy. Bertrand Chamayou is more convincing in early and late Liszt. And if you question his rapid tempo for En rêve you also wonder at his exhilarating heroics in the Trovatore paraphrase’s final pages where Liszt sends Verdi’s glory soaring to the stars.

Sixteen-year-old Lisa de la Salle once again suggests musicianship of rare quality. Her Bach-Busoni is of an enviable poise and serenity, her Chopin Etude (Op 25 No 6 rather than Op 25 No 4 as claimed in the notes) of a fluency and individuality far beyond precocity. David Fray is exhaustingly intense in Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and 17-year-old Jean-Frédéric Neuburger’s Beethoven is already scrupulously sensitive, focused and articulate. Severin von Eckardstein is finely attuned to every facet of the Schumann Fantasie, playing with an overall mastery and inner glow that augurs well.

Last, but far from least, an unforgettable evening with Boris Berezovsky and his two young Russian colleagues playing their hearts out in the Tchaikovsky Trio. As their recent recording of trios by Rachmaninov and Shostakovich declares, these artists have formed an inspiring partnership and once again, Berezovsky, who has the lion’s share of the proceedings, masks his formidable virtuosity and inner intensity with a deceptive nonchalance.

Naïve’s presentation is hardly outstanding but visually there are many surprises, with illuminating rather than distracting close-ups and glimpses of all the artists at work.