This is some of the most wonderful piano playing I’ve ever heard. Hamelin’s dazzling bravura and technical mastery can almost be taken for granted, but not the discreet nonchalance with which he dispatches even the most challenging passages.

The Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude from the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses is spellbindingly beautiful. Hamelin makes this extended piece sound arrestingly modern and radiantly dramatises the bewildering duality of Liszt’s life between the spiritual and the sensual, providing a serene resolution. Or does he?

In Venezia e Napoli, the contrast in the two gondoliers’ songs could not be greater. In the first, Hamelin produces exquisitely pellucid effects and in the second, based on a theme from Rossini’s Otello, a much darker sonority.

The B-minor Sonata is magnificent, from the first menacing gesture to the pauses (or foreboding silences) in the descending scale, which seem like question marks.

In terms of mood, Hamelin never puts a foot wrong. If ever there were a musical autobiography made in sound, this is it. In intellectual, emotional and technical terms, this is a CD to cherish.