Having recorded a major part of Rachmaninov’s piano music, Ashkenazy continues with the piano transcriptions, a cornucopia of teasing sophistication and intricacy. Although it would be idle to pretend that he still plays with his former nimbleness and glory, his performances retain a vigour and affection and a characteristic alertness to every passing fancy and surprise. The final gigue from the Bach Suite fizzes with energy. And even when he lacks, say, Moiseiwitsch’s mercurial grace and charm in Lilacs or in the Mendelssohn Scherzo, his lightly pedalled accounts allow every quasi-polyphonic and canonic strand to be heard with a diamond-like brilliance and clarity. There is a hint of strenuousness in the central cantabile of Bizet’s L’Arlésienne, and the textures in both the Tchaikovsky and Kreisler items are sometimes more clotted than lucid or scintillating. Yet the final veloce flight in Lilacs is thrown off with all the requisite lightness and Liebesfreud is full of zip and relish. Again, Ashkenazy can be relatively dour and unsmiling in the Rachmaninov Polka (Cherkassky’s arsenal of sly winks and nudges is hardly his style) yet even here his life-long devotion to his great compatriot is never in doubt. For his encores he is joined by his son Vovka and his wife Dódy, and, in a notably vivacious performance of the Italian Polka for four hands and trumpet, by Alastair Mackie. Decca’s sound is opulent and immaculate.