Busoni’s music can on occasion remind me of that quip by Eduard Hanslick when he encountered Brahms’s Fourth Symphony for the first time: ‘All through I felt I was being thrashed by two terribly clever men.’ When it’s played with true understanding, with mental and physical virtuosity held in perfect accord, it comes truly alive – think of Hamelin, Levit or Ogdon. Unfortunately, though Wolf Harden is absolutely committed to his music, it frequently sounds overly earnest. He begins with the Fifth Sonatina, giving its striking discord with due élan, but the fugal writing (from 1'42") is pretty unyielding; Hamelin by comparison is much more supple in effect.

From here, Harden moves on to the Preludio al corale e fuga sopra un frammento di Bach – not the one we know from the Fantasia contrappuntistica but rather an ‘Edizione minore’ – which he plays with absolute conviction, although again there’s a relentless quality, particularly in the fugues, that prevents the music from coming to life. The transcription of Bach’s Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E flat for lute sets off more promisingly, with a freely flowing Prelude, but the Fugue’s voicings are less than subtle and some of the semiquaver fingerwork in the Allegro is a touch uneven.

Wolf Harden ends with the glorious set of 10 Chorale Preludes, making slightly heavy weather of the exultant ringing of Komm, Gott Schöpfer, BWV667; he fares better in Wachet auf, BWV645, though still sounds overly cautious compared to Demidenko’s sleeky honed reading. The grave beauty of Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr, BWV639, is also compromised by lumpy trills and a lack of a real line – how much more beautiful it is in Andsnes’s hands. In Durch Adams Fall, BWV637, an already austere chorale becomes merely leaden, while in the ebullient In dir ist Freude, BWV615, he again makes us overly aware of the complexity of Busoni’s texture, Demidenko conveying its joy far more palpably.