This is the full extent of Murray Perahia’s representation in the series and at first glance you might question the selection: no sonatas, apart from pre-classical Scarlatti, no Bach or Schumann, and of the composers who are here only a bit of this and a bit of that. But the experience of it does in fact give a pretty good picture of one of today’s great artists. That he would become such a distinguished pianist after he won the Leeds Competition in 1972 was predictable enough, but I doubt whether the direction of his development, which at one point led him to take advice from Horowitz, could have been foreseen. Perahia’s Mendelssohn, then as now, was wonderful – always with such allure and finish; but it’s perhaps only in the last dozen years or so that he has found a new balance between the demands of detail and the overview. Is his range of colour wider now? Maybe not, but the scale of his playing is, and within the frame of each performance we sense stronger contrasts, a more sharply defined declamation and generally larger vistas and more space for the music to breathe.
My favourite tracks here (besides the Mendelssohn) are the Chopin Ballade, the Beethoven Variations, the Liszt Consolation and the unconventionally fleet Brahms Rhapsody, glinting with fresh light. I find much less magic in the 1980 recording of Schubert’s B flat Impromptu: nor do the Bartok Improvisations, made the same year, come across as quite the amalgam of sound and sense Perahia has habitually achieved since then – it’s a little as if he’s standing at a remove from it. The series of the Mozart concertos he made with the ECO, directing them from the keyboard, has not been surpassed as a set on modern instruments, and the C major Concerto K503 is an especially welcome choice since the 1981 recording is digital. If, like mine, your spirits never soar at the prospect of the Grieg Concerto – “the Grieg Piano Concerto by Grieg”, as Eric Morecambe used to refer to it – be thankful for the chance to experience it here, once in a while, in a version in which every note comes up glistening and thought about.'