For those to whom the name of this pianist is unfamiliar – and the producers of this handsomely packaged release assume she needs as much introduction as Maurice Chevalier – Yvonne Lefébure (1904-86) was a pupil of, among others, Widor, Dukas and Cortot. Though she performed throughout Europe and America, it was as a teacher that she was best known. Nerves, it seems, prevented her from having a more high-profile concert career.

The narrator-less DVD portrait, an assemblage of black-and-white and colour archive footage, may be loosely structured but it bowls along at a breathless pace. This is due in part to Madame herself, formidable, vivacious and coquettish by turns, and her ability to pack as many words into 10 seconds as she could notes on the piano, rendered in a relentless delivery that had not taken account of the invention of the microphone. That said, there is much to learn from her and three former pupils who reminisce with affection and insight.

There are many treasurable moments en route – Lefébure’s quite wonderful performance of the closing pages of Schumann’s Concerto and the elderly Cortot playing Chopin’s Op 69 No 1 Waltz ‘L’adieu’. There is also a toe-curling French crooner flirtily serenading the septuagenarian pianist during a long (and much used) television tribute; the Pathétique Sonata is wrongly credited as the Appassionata…but it all contributes to a lively, if over-long, salute to a forceful, articulate personality who, though her methods may now seem outdated, provided inspiration and guidance to numberless young artists.

The audio CD is less successful. Entitled ‘Ten years of happiness with Solstice…a florilegium of her best recordings’, the disc seems to be of performances made (at home?) between 1974 and 1984. The piano sounds like a small-toned half-grand with hard felts. Some of the performances remind us of a remarkable talent (I rather took to her dry, Gallic Bach) but mainly they are indicative of an artist past her best. L’isle joyeuse and the Fauré Nocturne are sadly lacking in colour and subtle shading, while the celestial theme and first variation from the last movement of the Beethoven are, unaccountably, played without any repeats. On the whole, a valuable release for committed piano buffs.