This strange mish-mash of a recital could only be redeemed by the finest artistry. But while there will be those who celebrate what they see as Pletnev’s charisma and orginality, others will surely baulk at playing so personalised and excessive, so devoid of ‘naturalness’.

More basically, how unsatisfying in the Etudes symphoniques to sandwich two of the five posthumous studies between Nos 8 and 9, omit No 10 entirely, and then later offer only the five ‘Albumblätter’ from the Bunte Blätter. Even more disturbing is the perverse celebration of Pletnev at the expense of Schumann. An initial feeling of audacity, of Schumann seemingly improvised or rhapsodised on the spot, gives way to a sense of wilfulness. Fits and starts replace the line or impetus of Etude No 12 and in the Fantasie Pletnev nails his garish colours to the mast with such defiance that little remains of Schumann’s teeming and kaleidoscopic romanticism. Hear Pletnev at his most provoking at 3'30" or in frequent lapses into bombast and you are sadly aware of the difference between self-serving rhetoric and genuine musicianship.

The ‘Albumblätter’ and Arabeske come less perversely attired though even here it is hard not to feel that Schumann’s freshness, his fragility and ardour, are compromised. No comparison, then, with artists of the stature of Anda, Cortot, Pollini and Perahia in the Symphonic Studies or Pollini, Richter, Argerich and Annie Fisher in the Fantasie.