Did you know that for the entire era of 78rpm shellac discs (that’s to say from the late 1890s to the mid-1950s), not a single piece by Alkan was recorded? And, so far as I know, only four piano rolls – one of which, played by Harold Bauer, featured ‘Le vent’, the penultimate track here.

Things have improved since then and Alkan has slowly been claiming his rightful place among the great composer-pianists, but it takes a certain kind of temperament and a superior finger technique to take him on. Those who cut the mustard are few and far between. Mark Viner is such a one and with this, the third volume of what will form the complete works, he can claim a place at the top table as one of the pre-eminent Alkan players de nos jours.

The extraordinary Grande Sonate (known as Les quatre âges – though not Alkan’s title) is the only work of the genre in which the four movements get progressively slower in tempo. It opens with a movement headed ‘20 ans: Très vite’. Viner is extrêmement vite, even plus vite que Marc-André Hamelin (and that’s saying something) with the devilish umcha-umchas of the left hand dispatched as though they were single notes instead of leaping tenths. But speed is not all here. The successful executant must have a twinkle in the eye and a touch of mischief. Another tick. Viner describes the second movement (‘30 ans: Quasi-Faust’) as ‘eleven and a half of the most terrifyingly difficult minutes in the entire piano literature’. They are also among the most thrilling to hear – especially when played like this. The third and fourth movements (‘40 ans’ and ‘50 ans’) hold you in suspense until Alkan, in a typically cruel gesture, suddenly slams the coffin lid shut.

The Trois Morceaux that follow are almost as quirky and capricious. Alkan provides no expression marks of any kind, so the pianist must search out ‘what is instinctively right rather than yielding to the demands of the composer’ (Viner again in his own first-rate booklet essay). ‘Aime-moi’ is a substantial (9'41") quasi-ballade with some passages that Ronald Smith famously described as having been ‘written for an extinct race of seven-fingered pianists’. No 2, ‘Le vent’ (see above), was very much in vogue a century ago but is seldom heard at all today. Its relentless runs of chromatic semiquavers are nailed by Viner with envy-making fluency and ease. Finally (and aptly) comes ‘Morte’: the ‘Dies irae’ theme, desolation, violent eruptions – audacious, unsettling, modern. And this was an early work.

Viner, like the young Hamelin, ploughs his own furrow. His day is yet to come, but come it surely will. And whether or not you care for Alkan’s music, here is a disc of piano-playing out of the top drawer.