Here, significantly and intriguingly, is Pollini in the early (1973) and later (2002) stages of his career, and while he remains recognisably the same pianist the difference is more striking than the similarity. His Schumann is classically elegant and precise, cutting like a laser through every thorny obstacle and making perfect sense of even the wildest idiosyncrasy (in a sonata once described by Clinton Gray-Fisk, a critic with an over-orderly mind, as ‘a farrago of fatuities’) yet never mistaking poetry for prose. Every detail seems illuminated from within (the second movement’s più allegro takes wing, the quasi-oboe flight in the central alla burla, ma pomposo shenanigans in the same movement is memorably delicate) yet never at the expense of naturalness or continuity. The Schubert works potential quasi-orchestral opacity is erased by a litheness and poetic acumen that make nonsense of snipers who dismiss Pollini out of hand. Here, the sonority is glistening and distinctive, the rhythm pliant and subtle and the tonal translucence in the gently propelled finale is pure early Pollini.

Turning to his latest offering, which includes a bonus disc of live performances of Beethoven’s Opp 57 and 78 Sonatas, is to find a less transcendentally equipped, more reined-in artist. In Op 54 there is scarcely a hint of Beethoven’s whimsy, though the first movement’s octave interjections come as curt reminders of thecomposer’s volatility, his always uncertaintemper. The finale is sufficiently urgent tosuggest its scurrying White Rabbit character(‘Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!’) though one misses the light and shade, the sheer wit, of Kempff’s 1969 performance on the BBC Legends disc. Op 57 is a marvel ofproficiency rather than inwardness or revelation and while many will welcome the absence ofpersonal intervention, others will long for a greater sense of freedom (try the opening of the Andante con moto where Pollini is all-too-plain-sailing). Again, in Op 78 (made substantial with both first movement repeats) the manner, while more lyrically yielding, is hardly winning or confiding, and in Op 90 there are hints that Pollini’s peerless lucidity comes at too high a price.

Like gleaming trajectories moving from A to B, these performances are superb at one level but oddly dispiriting at another; particularly when you realise that Pollini live and in the studio are more or less one and the same thing. The recordings are excellent but it is to the artist’s awe-inspiring early Schubert and Schumann that I shall return for the truest confirmation of his greatness.