To call this a concept album would be to diminish its power and timeliness. It is both a meditation on the fragility of life and a Bergmanesque game of chess with Death, for which Hough has laid out his pieces and pawns in a masterstroke of programming.

Bach, or more precisely responses to him, bookends the recital: from Busoni’s monumental edifice to Gounod’s spiritual meditation, the latter in Hough’s own translucent arrangement. In the Chaconne, Hough realises Busoni’s gothically enhanced architecture with a palette of orchestral timbres from clangorous bells – making full use of the brightness of his chosen Yamaha – to the tenderest silken threads. A completely different spectrum of colours, this time more operatic, paints a vivid picture of Fate in Busoni’s Sonatina Chamber Fantasy on Carmen.

Between these two it is Death’s move. But first the tumultuous opening movements of Chopin’s B flat minor Sonata return us to the turbulence of life. Despite its exhilarating intensity, there is a poised and noble feel to Hough’s Chopin, subtly embellished as it is with effortless rubatos. Listen to the Trio section of the Scherzo for a masterclass in unselfconscious artistry. Or marvel at the natural flowing tempo for the Funeral March, supporting a cinematographic contrast of ever more invasive death knells and subdued mourning.

Those bells toll again in Liszt’s ‘Funérailles’, with all shades of black on display, followed by evil grimaces in the Bagatelle sans tonalité. Hough’s own Sonata, from which the title of the disc derives, offers a moment of introspective and melancholic reflection, yet also one that is tempered by tight intellectual control. Five motivic cells are explored and developed contrapuntally to form two climaxes, in the second of which the fifth motif is placed in the spotlight. If this motif sounds familiar, you might be thinking of the chanson ‘En avril à Paris’, made famous by Charles Trenet in the early 1950s. Two of Hough’s own arrangements, of a Korean traditional song and of Gounod/Bach, are at once transcendental and defiant: checkmate Death.