Martin Helmchen’s programme explores the extremes of Schumann as a piano composer, at both his most inward and his most virtuoso. I have a suspicion that he’s more at ease in the former. The most successful readings of the Etudes symphoniques combine a delight in the physical with a mercurial charm. Helmchen begins quite slowly, as if keen to reveal the grandeur of Schumann’s conception. That sense of not being in a hurry is reinforced by the placing of the posthumous variations, to which Helmchen brings admirable thoughtfulness but occasionally a certain studied quality (notably in the fourth, a number Cortot played so miraculously). That he has the technique for this piece is clear from numbers such as the ninth étude, but he can’t match Romanovsky or (even more so) Anda, both wondrously effervescent. There are times, too, when you’re too aware that Schumann is throwing an awful lot of notes at the pianist, something that afflicts Var 8 and also certain points in the finale where the dotted rhythms come to seem somewhat incessant. This is offset, though, by the rapture he finds in numbers such as Var 9, in which he produces a wonderfully haloed sound. So it comes as no surprise that the Arabeske should be one of the highlights here, characterised with great subtlety.

The scale and sentiments of Waldszenen also suit him well, with highlights including a poetic ‘Freundliche Landschaft’, a lively ‘Jagdlied’ and a suitably dreamy ‘Abschied’. Incomparable, however, is Haefliger, as is (especially) Pires, be it in her myriad shadings of ‘Eintritt’ or the way she unfurls so gently the sinuous lines of ‘Einsame Blumen’.