Here is Volume 6 of Naxos’s continuing Moiseiwitsch series, the unfolding of a legend in the best possible transfers taken from American and Australian rather than English pressings wherever possible.

Tirelessly witty, urbane and scintillating, Moiseiwitsch could charm the birds out of the trees and his performances of several of his favourite and delectable encores (always playfully unannounced in concert, leaving his audience in a rustle of whispers and guesswork) are unforgettable in their magic, their teasing elegance and dexterity. Debussy’s ‘Clair de lune’ is truly andante rather than a dragging, sentimentalised adagio and in ‘Jardins sous la pluie’ and the Ravel ‘Toccata’ one witnesses a pianistic aplomb and wizardry inaccessible to more accurate, frequently doctored modern recordings.

Jeux d’eau is taken at a harassed allegro (the exigencies of 78s?) rather than Ravel’s indolent and sun-shot allegretto, yet even here Moiseiwitsch’s controversial tempo allows him an ease and flexibility and an opportunity to glory in the light and shade so central to his genius. His occasional mischievous tampering with the text (why not sky this passage or that an octave higher than written if you feel like it?) in, for example, Granados’s Spanish Dances might prompt a raised eyebrow from, say, Alicia de Larrocha, though she would surely be the first to delight in such nonchalantly deployed style and brio.

Chasins’ picture-postcard orientalism is spun off with a finesse that few if any could equal and, memorably partnered by Constant Lambert, Moiseiwitsch’s beloved Delius Concerto is played with a glow and delicacy that declare his love in every bar. Two estimates of Moiseiwitsch – as the sort of plum label pianist who pleases but rarely thrills, and of his Prokofiev and Vallier items as ‘part of a dull little collection, dully played and recorded’ (Sackville-West’s and Shaw-Taylor’s The Record Guide) – are critical gaffs to set the mind reeling.

Meanwhile, there is Moiseiwitsch’s justly celebrated Chopin and Rachmaninov still to come (his Mendelssohn-Rachmaninov Midsummer Night’s Dream Scherzo is high on virtually all pianists’ desert island disc selections). I can scarcely wait for Volume 7.