Virtually all of Shostakovich’s piano music is assembled here, the only missing items being bits of juvenilia that the new Complete Edition in Moscow is preparing for publication. Everything has been recorded before but some of the smaller items have had short shelf-lives, and the convenience of the package is self-recommending (it would have been more so had it appeared at budget price).

Boris Petrushansky was a finalist in the 1969 Leeds Competition and has enjoyed particular success in Italy, where he currently lives, having taught in Imola since 1990. In the early pieces and Op 34 Preludes I have previously rated him “a formidably agile and robust player, with a wide range of colour and attack at his disposal, plus a fine feeling for Shostakovichian rhetoric”. There are really very few “buts” to enter, so far as his playing on the other discs is concerned. His Preludes and Fugues, recorded in 1992‑93, appeared on CD just too late for inclusion in my Gramophone “Collection” piece (2/02), where they would have had more than an honourable mention. Like Tatyana Nikolayeva, he leans towards spacious tempi – hence three discs for the cycle as opposed to Ashkenazy and Sherbakov’s two – and in a couple of the more probing pieces I find him slightly literal. Other than that, there is little to choose between him and his distinguished rivals. Nikolayeva’s 1962 Melodiya recording, far superior to her two later efforts and arguably to all others, still awaits transfer to CD.

The drawback here is recording quality. The first of the Preludes and Fugues discs sounds slightly dry and clinical, the Preludes and early pieces extremely so. By contrast the remainder of the Preludes and Fugues, recorded in a different location, suffer from an excess of resonance. Best sonically is the most recent disc, which contains finely judged readings of both Sonatas, conspicuous for their drive and their command of colour and rhythm. As a separate issue, this would be competitive with the best on record (apart from Gilels’s matchless Second Sonata), the more so since it comes with a clutch of miniatures otherwise currently unavailable.