For Pollini, Chopin has been part of his life since his triumph in the 1960 Chopin Competition in Warsaw. And yet his new set of the Nocturnes, ‘complete’ (apart from the posthumous C sharp minor Nocturne) is sadly incomplete. Here, surely, is a labour of duty rather than love, making you nostalgic for the great days when Pollini’s playing possessed extraordinary strength, clarity and nobility of expression.

You could, at a pinch, claim that his is the least sentimental of Nocturne recordings, a strong-armed riposte to gentler, more interior virtues. Yet even if you prefer a surly handshake to a loving caress, Pollini’s sullen view of the D flat Nocturne’s florid Italianate dream-world, or his ungainly, unsympathetic way with the Op 55 E flat Nocturne’s near-Fauréan radiance and limpidity, are hard to forgive.

He is more testy than affectionate in the B major Nocturne, Op 9 No 3, and what little mystery he finds in the stark moonscape of the C sharp minor Nocturne, Op 27 No 1 (for the ever-fanciful James Huneker ‘like a corpse washed ashore on a Venetian lagoon’). Even the great C minor Nocturne cannot tempt him away from such cold and unfeeling sobriety.

The hushed codas to the F minor and E minor Nocturnes are among the few instances of a greater poetic responsivenss and engagement, slim compensations for performances that hardly rank with those by Maria João Pires, Claudio Arrau – with his philosophical weight and depth – and, most of all, Arthur Rubinstein with his inimitable elegance and evocation.