Passing from ’Credo’, the title of her first DG recital, to ‘Reflection’, Hélène Grimaud presents us with a second lovingly themed gift, this time mirroring the entwined love of Robert and Clara Schumann and their adored protégé, Johannes Brahms. Sumptuously presented (there are 13 photographs of the pianist) and recorded, few tributes could be more committed.

Grimaud’s performance of Robert’s Piano Concerto is a superbly bracing riposte to more indulgent and sentimental readings. Brilliantly partnered by Esa-Pekka Salonen, who conducts with all the joy of first discovery, she launches the work with fierce authority before playing the principal theme with a rare sense of its expressivo and affetuoso character. The cadenza is as full-blooded as even the most ardent lover of the Concerto could wish, and if the finale occasionally sounds overbearing this is certainly among the most highly charged of Schumann piano concerto recordings.

She is no less bold and impassioned partnering Anne Sofie von Otter, an ideal match for a singer whose intensity and vision leave you in no doubt that Clara was a more-than-gifted composer as well as a great pianist.

Grimaud ends with Brahms’s brief return to his early drama and heroics in his two Op 79 Rhapsodies, playing with thrilling immediacy in the first and a welcome grandeur in the second. But before that she joins Truls Mørk in the E minor Cello Sonata, where you get an almost palpable sense of the artists lifting each other to heights they might find hard to achieve alone. Few performances on record have a more robust eloquence and fervour. This is an exceptional disc, highlighting a young pianist who, imperiously and audaciously, lives for the moment.