‘Oh my God! I would love to play with her’ is Itzhak Perlman’s exclamation in the single-page conversation that precedes Tully Potter’s note in the booklet. She – Argerich – explains that a performance in Saratoga, NY, in 1998 was the only previous chance they’d had to play together. That performance of Schumann’s First Violin Sonata that is the opening piece on this disc (the Franck and Kreutzer Sonatas that completed the programme appeared on EMI in 1999), while the rest was recorded under studio conditions in Paris earlier this year, with the Brahms and Bach being new to Perlman’s repertoire.

The sense of two consummate musicians utterly in love with the music and responding instinctively to each other is palpable throughout. In the Schumann sonata the piano dominates to an extent and the microphone picks up the darker tones of Perlman’s violin, but Argerich’s characteristic ability to turn on a dynamic sixpence means that she never overpowers the violinist. This is one of those performances that’s truly ‘in the moment’; and if Perlman tires slightly in the manic semiquavers of the finale, that’s Schumann’s fault rather than the players’, despite the ambitious tempo they set themselves. Applause is retained.

The studio portions are more ideally recorded, achieving a finer balance between the instruments and focusing on the sweetness of the upper register of Perlman’s violin, especially in the Bach. Not that Brahms’s Scherzo for the collaborative ‘F-A-E’ Sonata lacks in a degree of gruffness as Perlman digs down into the G string. Nevertheless, the elfin fantasy of Schumann’s three Op 73 pieces is put across vividly, and the Bach is coloured and shaded beautifully.

This is the result of two lifetimes of world-class musicianship. It’s just astonishing that Perlman (70 at the time of the Paris sessions) and Argerich (74) took so long finally to record together in the studio. ‘It’s like having a conversation,’ says the violinist. One into which we’re privileged to eavesdrop.