This daunting and inspired coupling is played by Hamish Milne with an uplifting musical authority. Indeed, aided by Hyperion’s superb sound (rich and resonant throughout the entire register), Milne even surpasses his earlier L’Oiseau-Lyre recording of the Liszt/Busoni Fantasy, achieving an entirely apt unforced grandeur and sobriety. Here you are made to realise that the Ad nos Fantasy – a massive tribute to Busoni as transcriber – is not only among his finest achievements but (as Milne suggests in his accompanying notes) transcends Liszt’s original organ work and seemingly takes on a life of its own. The central Adagio in particular has all of Liszt’s obsessive and ecstatic wheeling round an idea yet is unmistakably stamped with Busoni’s own intimidating power. And it is here in particular that Milne offers playing of the rarest refinement and sensitivity before launching the final fugue in a blaze of virtuosity.

Busoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica takes such music to a further extreme. Among the composer’s most formidable works, its colossal range and scope tell you that Busoni’s music can seem like a mighty mountain range glimpsed behind clouds. Again, Milne’s performance is of an unfaltering beauty and lucidity. As an extra he sandwiches Busoni’s transcription of the Andantino from Mozart’s Jeunehomme Concerto between these two peaks, a rarity where Mozart’s sublimity is coloured by Busoni’s altogether more forbidding personality. Milne may playfully claim in his notes that he would “like to play like Bill Evans and Ahmad Jamal and sing like Flagstad”, but we should surely be mightily grateful for his own unmistakable personality.