Mark Viner has done just that, selecting five of Thalberg’s greatest opera fantasies, opening with the most celebrated. The Fantasia on themes from Rossini’s Moïse ends with a setting of the prayer from Act 4 passed between the two hands and decorated with swirling arpeggios to give the aural illusion of three hands playing. Thalberg’s audiences stood on their chairs to see how it was done. It still raises a smile of wonder today, especially when played as masterfully as here. Viner injects a real sense of drama into the opening pages, using the full range of his beautifully voiced Steinway to full advantage. His rubato is subtly, perfectly judged; the piano sings (this is what Thalberg was all about – take a look at his L’art du chant appliqué au piano, Op 70); and from Viner’s fingers the iridescent showers of notes cascade with scintillating exuberance. Raymond Lewenthal in 1975 (Angel) is faster (13'35"), Francesco Nicolosi in 1992 (Marco Polo, 1/96) more sluggish (16'51"), but Viner (15'17") is more powerfully affecting than either and better recorded.

Moses sets the standard for the rest of the programme. The Don Giovanni Fantasy, the second of two Thalberg wrote, uses the Serenade from Act 2 and the Minuet from Act 1, the latter played with impish wit. The finale’s three-hand effect is achieved this time by huge scales that sweep from top to bottom of the keyboard. The Sonnambula Caprice ends with the passages of interlocking chromatic octaves (another Thalberg invention) that so thrilled Mendelssohn. Finally comes the Don Pasquale Fantasy, familiar from Earl Wild’s famous 1964 Vanguard LP ‘The Virtuoso Piano’ (11/68, 8/92). Viner’s account is no less scintillating, one to set beside Wild and Marc-André Hamelin’s astonishing live performance from the 1994 Husum Festival (Danacord, 4/97). This is a quite exceptional disc from a blazing young British talent.