Here, in performances from 1963-65, is vintage Richter and a reminder of a time when he bestrode the stage like a colossus, striking awe and amazement in all who heard him at his greatest. Every bar of Schumann’s Papillons brims over with a sense of wonder, and never more so than in the coda’s whispered enchantment. His performance, too, of the Introduction and Allegro appassionato, with its alternation of yearning and exuberant romanticism, tells you at every point of Schumann’s half-crazed delirium, of his confession that his heart and mind were so filled with music that he could “sing himself to death”. He could hardly be more eloquently partnered than by Britten.

It is only when we reach the Schubert B flat Sonata that controversy is aroused. Here he takes his and the audience’s concentration to the very edge, and for some his sepulchral transformation of Molto moderato into Molto adagio is like the remorseless drip of a Chinese water torture. The first-movement repeat is observed, the extra nine bars erupting in a trill as intimidating as the last trump, while the Andante sostenuto is like a numbing voice from another world with only an occasional reassuring shaft of light. Did others achieve a no less speculative and profound effect with simpler, less death-haunted means, a more natural Schubertian flow and lyricism? The question will surely be asked by all lovers of great music and its performance.

This beautifully recorded and presented disc also includes an essay by Jeremy Siepmann who sounds absolutely the right note.