This is Weissenberg’s personal selection, and a wide-ranging, richly fascinating choice it is too. No Schumann and none of his recordings with Karajan, but there are only two titles (the Czerny and Stravinsky pieces) duplicated with Philips’ Great Pianists of the 20th Century (2/99).

Weissenberg had a reputation in some quarters for being ‘difficult’. Nine times out of ten, ‘difficult’ means someone of strong personal convictions trying to get it right. There may be any number of contentious musical decisions in these performances, but so too is there playing of burning purpose. One can forgive an artist much with this attribute. Bland he ain’t.

Liszt opens proceedings with fine accounts of two Petrarch Sonnets. Typical of Weissenberg’s individuality is the passage before and after the delicious little chromatic run at 4'45" in Sonnet 104, plucked out of the air with improvisatory skill. The Sonata is no hand-me-down, run-of-the-mill affair but fiercely argued and freshly minted. The acoustic is rather too intimate and, at times, Weissenberg seems almost wilful in his spare use of the pedal (though the way his fingers alone create a singing line is a miracle in itself). The big tune is thrashed out in an ugly manner at its first appearance and occasionally he loses sight of the principal voices in favour of some hidden counterpart, but I shall add this to my list of B minors to live with. This and Czerny’s La Ricordanza Variations were Horowitz territory for the young Weissenberg, an acknowledgement of what he had learnt from his friendship with the great pianist. The fingers dazzle and delight in the Variations (but I wish EMI had given separate tracks for each section of this and the Liszt Sonata). Harold Bauer’s intimate transcription of Franck’s organ piece was also an early Weissenberg discovery, the pianist’s affection for the piece evident in every bar.

He is at his most wayward in the Chopin Sonata, the opening subject played with a dreadful left-hand clatter and scant regard to Chopin’s pianissimo request. The Scherzo follows on, hammered out at full bore, and the con anima central section of the Funeral March is offered without a hint of rubato. But then there are passages throughout which are ineffably touching and a Finale which, unusually, is both clarion-clear and yet conveys ‘the night wind sweeping over churchyard graves’. The thin, unflattering recorded sound in the Ravel solo pieces militate against their complete success; the Stravinsky was a speciality (Ingmar Bergman’s contemporaneous film of Weissenberg playing the suite is an archive treasure).

As to the concertos, the Ravel is one of the finest on disc, up there with Michelangeli and Argerich. The Brahms, too (recorded live), is on a par with Fleischer and Katchen. And here, in the slow movement, is an example of Weissenberg’s ace card – an ability to ratchet up the tension to a nearly unbearable level: he is very good at grief and ecstasy, as the long-unavailable Rach 3 also demonstrates. It’s a pity that part of the first orchestral chord is introuvable (careless remastering or an unhappy omission on the original recording?). A shame, too, that the piano is recorded so far forward as to make the orchestral contribution incidental. Should you want to hear all the delicacies and difficulties of the solo part sparsely pedalled and ‘in close-up’, then this the recording to have. Yet despite, or because of, the imperfect balance, what emerges is a superbly controlled and articulated performance, full of passion and poetry. After those four desolate solo bars in the last movement – Rachmaninov at his most homesick – Weissenberg builds to the emotional climax of the work with the utmost intensity. I don’t mind telling you that it reduced me to tears.

As to the other Third Concerto on the disc, Prokofiev’s, boasting a far happier balance be- tween soloist and orchestra, it is a hard-driven, octane-propelled performance. Perhaps a little too much. Argerich’s classic account with Abbado combines the same tumultuous sweep with whimsy and more refined tonal colouring. Still, here and throughout most of these well-filled discs, Weissenberg is fairly irresistible.