Let me describe the instrument you are listening to because the chances are that, like me, you will have heard of a pedal piano but never actually heard one played. This one was built in 1853 by Érard of Paris, currently housed there in the Collection Musée de la Musique. Restored in 2009, it is the very one with which Alkan amazed his audiences and subsequently kept in his home till his death. It looks exactly like a (straight-strung) grand piano except that where you expect two legs and pedal mechanism is a kind of stunted upright piano case. An organist’s bench is attached to this by a frame containing a straight pedalboard of 32 notes above which are placed, disconcertingly for any pianist, the forte and una corda pedals. Even the great Olivier Latry has to admit that ‘organists require special training to play it’.

That said, a little piano pédalier goes a long way, especially if you are accustomed to hearing the Liszt and Schumann works on the organ on which they are far more effective. Realistically recorded, there is no disguising the fact that the pédalier is a percussion instrument (try Schumann’s Op 58 No 4) which produces a certain amount of clunking in the playing process. True, the five short Boëly works are charming curiosities, but it is two of Alkan’s Op 66 Préludes that impress the most. The disc is nicely presented, as you’d expect from Naïve, though reading the notes on the music is like wading through treacle.