Here, in a magisterial contribution to this celebratory year, is a pianist born for Liszt’s rhetorical grandeur. All these performances, exhausting and elating in their strength and mastery, are on a scale far beyond the offerings of other more obviously celebrated pianists. With the 12 Transcendental Etudes already behind her on disc, Claire-Marie Le Guay now takes three of Liszt’s masterpieces by storm, riveting your attention in every bar of the Dante Sonata, whether in her dazzling final pages or in a no less vivid response to the improvisato and dolcissimo con amore sections. In the B minor Sonata her rubato is heavy and intense in a style that returns you to the great days of Claudio Arrau. She makes it clear that this is a towering landmark in the history of music and her entire performance is a far cry from Marguerite Long’s definition of the French school of piano-playing: one that is ‘ludic, precise, slender…concentrating on grace rather than force’. Again, Le Guay’s way with the Second Ballade is of an unfaltering authority (though with an unusual choice of ossia in the final build-up). Here, as Sacheverell Sitwell so eloquently told us, is music ‘concerned less with personal suffering than with great happenings on the epical scale’. The sound is of demonstration quality and I can’t wait to hear this formidable and compulsive artist again.