This has to be the CD equivalent of hygge. Russian-born American pianist Kirill Gerstein’s Mozart dialogue with his octogenarian mentor and ‘inspiration’, Ferenc Rados, contains some of the most refined and cultured music-making you could wish for, everything about it being suffused with warmth and affection. And then there’s the back story. When Gerstein first encountered the Hungarian master at Steven Isserlis’s Prussia Cove chamber music sessions in 2004, his playing, according to Gerstein himself, ‘irritated’ Rados. The subsequent hours of working together on various pieces were, Gerstein says, a ‘wonderfully deflating’ experience, followed by regular visits to Budapest to meet and play for the musician Gerstein considers ‘the single most influential person’ in his musical life.

This recording is Gerstein’s heroic attempt to capture and preserve under ideal studio-quality conditions the unique playing (and occasional humming along) of the former teacher of such pianistic luminaries as Zoltán Kocsis, András Schiff and Dezső Ránki. Both Gerstein (in his interview with Joseph Horowitz) and Steven Isserlis (in a touching tribute, also included in the booklet notes) portray a fascinating and complex yet humane and generous artist, one dedicated to the essence of music. And this is what makes this recording so special: its honest, noble and sublime music-making. Nothing is either flashy and self-serving or rigid and rudimentary. Everything has the natural communicative ease – between players, between them and the music, between music and an imagined audience – that you would expect from the domestic medium of the piano duet. Hear the grace with which Gerstein introduces his delicious ornaments and mini-cadenzas in the finale of the C major Sonata, K521. And the closing pages of the slow movement of the same piece have to be among the most breathtaking Mozartian passages ever captured on disc, with a fractional slowing to let heavenly inspiration work its magic.

In the F major Sonata, K497, roles are reversed and Rados takes the upper part. Here, it is operatic complexity that is to the fore, with structure and drama freely and naturally interwoven. This is a masterclass in subtle reaction to detail, be it in phrasing, pedalling or give-and-take between the musicians. Some albums make you want to learn more about the pieces you hear; some make you want to play them yourselves. Only rarely are you reminded why you fell in love with music in the first place. Please, please listen. And if you don’t believe me, look for anything of Rados on YouTube.