These are safe and dependable performances of music that cries out for greater romantic ardour and poetic commitment. Safety does not come first in the Third Sonata’s manic mood-swings, in so many mercurial shifts from Florestan’s exuberance to Eusebian rapture and introspection. Felipe Scagliusi (Brazilian-born but Paris-based) may hold the reins in the finale’s Prestissimo possible, chaste in writhing figuration that can easily engulf melodic lines and send the entire structure spinning out of control, but where are the rushes of adrenalin central to such writing, most notably in a climax of juddering tremolandos?

The Three Romances succumb to similar caution with insufficient underlying agitation in No 1 and too generalised a way with melody and counter-melody in No 2 (music that drove Clara to cry out in wonder, “a beautiful love duet. Ah! Robert…I will not give up the Romances”). There is a tired and lethargic response to the bounding rhythms of No 3; and in the Fantasie, arguably Schumann’s greatest keyboard work, there is little to confirm Robert’s view that the first movement is “the most passionate thing I have ever written”. There is too little rhythmic lift in the central march and Scagliusi’s way with the finale will hardly prompt you to think of “shifting sunset vapour” (Andrew Porter). The catalogue bulges with classic performances of this masterpiece and whether you turn to Argerich’s flashes of summer lightning, to Pollini’s sculpted perfection, to Richter, Katchen or Annie Fisher, you will hear playing of a different calibre and dimension. The recordings are impressive, the performances hardly competitive.