Here’s an aural equivalent of time-lapse photography, a quick tour of musical history from JS Bach (a point of reference throughout) to Schnittke, demonstrating changes not only in style but also in the sonorities and constraints of the keyboard instruments of the time. It could easily have turned gimmicky; and since all the works are fantasies, a genre that consciously abandons guard rails and encourages composers to break free, it could have lost focus, too. But not in the hands of Alexander Melnikov. Fully attentive to historical shifts in idiom and unusually adept at illuminating the personality of different instruments, he’s also a quicksilver artist whose uncanny sense of phrasing responds to the moment-to-moment swerves of the music. He’s a brilliant communicator: whether in the intense rhetoric of JS Bach’s ‘Chromatic’ Fantasia or the pained grief that haunts CPE Bach’s Fantasia, whether in the stately return to the past that flanks the faux-Baroque Busoni or the dissonant embrace of modernism that fuels the manic Schnittke, Melnikov not only relishes every twist in the musical landscape but makes us relish them as well. Our pleasure is magnified by the excellence of the engineering.

Unfortunately, the Graff piano chosen for the Mendelssohn has a dullish sound that blurs detail; and although we get striking pictures of the instruments, the otherwise excellent notes by Jean-Jacques Groleau say nothing about them. These are minor drawbacks, though. Certainly, anyone attracted to the concept should check out this recital – as well as a predecessor, a nearly chronological survey of eight fantasies vibrantly played on a modern grand by Pavel Gintov (‘Piano Fantasies’ on Navona, issued in October 2021). Several composers are duplicated but only one work, the Chopin – and Gintov offers a rare chance to hear the Sonata-Fantasy No 2 by Stravinsky’s teacher Fedir Yakymenko. Both discs will knock you out.