The works of Elliott Carter’s middle years only became widely known through the recordings made when Teresa Stern was the influential “co-ordinator” at Nonesuch. Together with a few later sessions, they feature in this centenary retrospective – the only omission being Paul Zukowsky’s pioneering account of the Duo for violin and piano, replaced with James Levine’s first rendition of the Variations, which has great impact but also a portentousness not evident elsewhere.

Central to these performances is Paul Jacobs, who, with Charles Rosen, confirmed that Carter’s piano-writing has an expressive eloquence to match its intellectual brilliance. Listening to his command of rhetoric in the Piano Sonata, Carter’s first (untypical) masterpiece, or the incisive interplay with Joel Krosnick in the Cello Sonata, which marks a new departure, is to be reminded of his unstinting advocacy. As a harpsichordist, Jacobs is unfailingly lucid in the deft play on Baroque stylisms of the Sonata for flute, oboe, cello and harpsichord; and his partnership with Gilbert Kalish in the epic Double Concerto brings a tensile energy yet to be equalled – for all that the stereophonic placing now feels a little too extreme. Other pianists have found greater poise in Night Fantasies, but none has exceeded Jacobs’s grasp of its stream-of-consciousness intensity. Nor has the Composers Quartet been outdone in making the magisterial First Quartet so inclusive an experience, though the vehemence of its successor undersells the music’s acerbic humour.

Otherwise, Jan DeGaetani pertly characterises the early settings of Robert Frost, and Gerard Schwarz brings warmth to the Copland-like Elegy and suggests that The Minotaur ballet is not so indebted to Stravinsky as is often assumed. Oliver Knussen gives notice of a fervent advocacy in the song-cycle In Sleep, In Thunder, but Martyn Hill is too elegant to convey the violent contrasts of Robert Lowell’s verse, whereas The Fires of London tend towards the heavy-handed in the scintillating Triple Duo. Their inclusion is still welcome, and the quality of remastering, annotations and presentation does the project justice. Carter devotees will find this a mandatory purchase.