György Cziffra (1921-94) was a virtuoso of seemingly superhuman powers who, after dazzling and astounding audiences during the 1950s and ’60s, vanished as quickly as he had appeared, a victim of personal tragedy and of changing taste and fashion. Yet even his early celebrity was quickly clouded when it was felt that he used composers as a springboard for personal excess and idiosyncrasy. The pianist came first, the composer a poor second. Of course, in such works as Liszt’s Gnomenreigen and Grand galop chromatique, Cziffra’s phenomenal dexterity and explosive temperament created a unique demonic frisson. And it could be argued that his textual emendations, glitter and extravagance formed a close approximation to Liszt’s own entirely 19th-century virtuosity skirt the fact that Liszt was a greater composer than such self-regarding bravura suggests, and he was wholly miscast in Chopin.

Here Cziffra’s frenzy and lethargy left the most classically biased of the great Romantics stranded and gasping for air. Overall, his virtuosity mirrored itself, and the public, weary of such exaggeration, turned elsewhere in search of greater depth and spiritual refreshment.

Conventional wisdom – or cliché – positively forbids such criticism of Glenn Gould’s iconic status. Yet Bruno Monsaingeon’s film Glenn Gould, The Alchemist, divided between performance and discussion, unwittingly suggests a journey into narcissism. Here, once more, are those over-familiar arguments concerning Gould’s dislike of public performance, of a hedonistic life-style, of passing references to Orlando Gibbons as his favourite composer, of his love of the Romantics (he means Bizet and Sibelius) and of how Chopin simply ‘goes in one ear and out the other’.

Even the simplest questions prompt a torrent of impenetrable verbiage, contradiction and parenthesis which he clearly sees as the height of intellectual clarity; a relentless playing to the gallery. His insistence, too, that great music is in serious need of technological help for its survival (‘maybe we could cut back to 7 here, insert 3 there, create a crescendo here, a decrescendo there’ etc) often leads to freeze-dried results that have little connection with the human spirit in all its richness, fullness and variety. Gould remains hermetically sealed within his own brilliance.

After well over two hours of Gould’s incessant talk, Moiseiwitsch’s supreme but unobtrusive mastery in the Wagner-Liszt Tannhäuser transcription is like manna from heaven. Offered as a bonus to Cziffra’s recital, Moiseiwitsch’s easy and magically fluent achievement is the reverse of egocentric or self-serving. Both DVDs are outstandingly filmed, and Moiseiwitsch’s stately bearing, Gould’s hyperactivity and Cziffra’s leather bracelet (a grim reminder of his time as a political prisoner in Hungary where he worked in a stone-breaking gang) all provide their own fascinating visual commentary.