Felicja Blumental gave the first performance of Penderecki’s Partita in 1971 and, switching from piano to harpsichord, relishes every minute of its eclectic scoring (she is joined by electric guitar, bass guitar, double bass and orchestra). Buzzing with the ferocity of a hornets’ nest, Penderecki’s sound world is intricate, exhilarating and unpredictable, with many nail-biting changes of texture and direction.

However, Blumental finds herself hard-pressed by Paderewski’s more exuberant demands, so that while generally fleet and affectionate, she is out-manoeuvred at every point by Earl Wild’s dazzling recordings of both the Piano Concerto and the Polish Fantasy. Such music requires razor-sharp articulacy, zest and style if it is not to sound quaint and outdated (the lofty authors of The Record Guide found the Fantasy “a mere gewgaw”), qualities supplied in super-abundance – and with a few nifty additions of his own – by Wild. This is the second of Blumental’s recordings of Paderewski’s Polish Fantasy and the sound, dating from 1973, varies alarmingly: reasonable in the Concerto, poor in the Fantasy and needing greater pin-point definition in the Penderecki.