Liszt could hardly have received a more sumptuous or ingenious tribute than that offered by Antonio Pompa-Baldi. Opening with the last of Lyapunov’s 12 Transcendental Etudes (‘Elégie en memoire de Franz Liszt), he continues with Chopin’s Op 10 Etudes, dedicated to Liszt, original Liszt in the B minor Ballade and Liszt as master of the operatic paraphrase in Verdi’s Ernani, and ends with Roberto Piana’s Après une lecture de Liszt, dedicated to Pompa-Baldi and now receiving its first recording.

In the Lyapunov, a massive Hungarian Rhapsody though one with a Balakirev-influenced Russian twist, the playing is of a thunderous aplomb. There is grandeur, too, in the Chopin Etudes, notably in No 1, most dazzling of curtain-raisers and a reworking of Bach’s First Prelude; in the near-Wagnerian malaise of No 6, where the pianist’s rubato is sufficiently bold and intense to tug at the heart-strings; and in the ‘Revolutionary’ Etude, where his outsize command comes into its own. You may miss something of, say, Ashkenazy’s mercurial and poetic flight in his early recording or Pollini’s crystalline perfection (again, in his first recording), but there is no denying Pompa-Baldi’s formidable power and eloquence.

He is once more in his element in the storming rhetoric of Liszt’s Second Ballade and Ernani Paraphrase before ending with a truly astonishing acknowledgement of Liszt’s genius by an Italian composer born in 1971. The ghosts of the First Concerto, the B minor Sonata, the Dante Sonata, Feux follets and many other sources of inspiration flit in and out of its demonic textures. And here Pompa-Baldi’s playing will send shivers down the spine of even the most ardent lover of virtuosity and high-octane rhetoric. Pianists should take note, though I doubt whether many will come within distance of a truly blistering attack.