This is technically demanding repertoire. Not many pianists would even attempt it. Yet, here is a 33-year-old whose technique is so formidable that none of his decisions are dictated by the level of difficulty. Artists of this calibre should be treasured.

How knowingly he captures the melancholic nostalgia below the surface of Rachmaninov’s late masterpiece Variations on a Theme of Corelli. This is Rachmaninov with nothing more to prove, no further need to impress an increasingly fickle public, making music out of a private compulsion to create. Kempf displays the requisite range of power and inward-looking tenderness to match Rachmaninov’s vision.

Ferruccio Busoni’s transcription of the chaconne from Bach’s second Violin Partita follows in the same key with a satisfying inevitability. Here Kempf rises to the challenge set by Busoni to recreate the sound of a vast church organ with all stops out.

In Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales and Stravinsky’s Three movements from Petrushka, Kempf...