Sviatoslav Richter’s Schubert has always provoked controversy and APR’s reissue of recordings dating from 1956 57 is a savage reminder of a pianist of uncompromising vision. Rhythms are held in a vice-like grip and there can rarely have been a more radical shift of simple-minded notions of Viennese charm and gentility. Indeed, I was quickly reminded of a telephone call I received some years ago from Richter’s compatriot Nikolai Demidenko, asking me in savage tones whether I considered Schubert “some sort of sweetie-pie” (he was responding to a journalist who found his Schubert too wintry). Certainly there is little sweetness from Richter, though his remorseless tread is unforgettably countered in the Trio of the A minor Sonata’s Scherzo which is played with such poise and lucidity that it soars to ultimate heights of poetry. A suitably icy wind blows across the finale (a not-so-distant relation of the finale of Mozart’s sonata in the same key) and even in the exultant, less despairing pages of the D major Sonata Richter’s adamantine strength and rhythm are paramount. You may miss Kempff’s beguiling lilt in the sing-a-song-of-sixpence finale or Gilels’s emotionalism in the con moto but you can never be less than awed by such consummate if chilling mastery.

Naxos’s issue of recordings dating from 1948 56 includes more austere Schubert (though the A flat Impromptu, D935, is an exception). But when you turn to Richter’s Schumann you enter another world. Here this great pianist reminds you that Schumann has always been central to the repertoires of the finest Russian pianists (Moiseiwitsch, Horowitz, Gilels and Richter). Rarely in its entire history can the Humoreske have been given with such energy and refinement, such poetry and fantasy. Try the Einfach und zart and the following Intermezzo with its joyous carillon of bells, or the final pages where Richter truly recalls “magic casements, opening on the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn”. Five movements from the Op 12 Fantasiestücke complete the picture, and so too does Chopin’s E minor Etude with Richter’s slowly spiralling and assuaging view of the heavenly middle section. Lev Oborin, whose career was launched by his triumph in the inaugural 1927 Chopin Competition in Warsaw, was clearly a lesser artist than Richter or Gilels, yet his recital shows a special balance of sense and sensibility.

What superb if unobtrusive technique in Chopin’s F minor Etude from Op 25, what grace and sparkle in the Scherzo from Beethoven’s Op 2 No 2 Sonata! He can be quietly spoken in the Chopin Sonata’s opening Allegro maestoso (the reverse of Argerich’s flaring brilliance or Gilels’s magisterial utterance) but he is never less than authoritative and shows a special affection in his Tchaikovsky items. Not surprisingly he became not only Oistrakh’s favoured partner but also a greatly respected teacher. The remastering by both APR and Naxos in the face of limitations (more obvious in Oborin’s than Richter’s recordings) is more than impressive.