Warner Classics New CD     2564 62258-2 (55 minutes)

No more formidable young pianist exists and his stunning recital balances prodigies of virtuosity with an unfaltering musical integrity. His Op 10 No 1 study is maestoso indeed, and never more so than when Godowsky’s massive carillon of sound is embellished with a counterpoint as imperious as the last trump. Chopin’s originals (also magnificently recorded for Teldec by Berezovsky –4/92R) are always musically rather than sensationally characterised, the reverse of, say, Cziffra’s dazzling if infamous distortions, yet Berezovsky’s way with Op 10 No 5 is of a rollicking bravura that few could equal.

In the left-hand-only Studies his tone reminded me of Neuhaus’s description of Gilels, ‘rich in noble metal, a 24-carat gold that we find in the voices of the great singers’ and, throughout, you are also reminded of Shakespeare’s words: ‘O, it is excellent / To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant.’ Here, caught ‘on the wing’, there is none of that diffidence that occasionally affects Berezovsky when at his least concentrated but rather playing in the grandest of grand Russian traditions.

For encores there are Alt Wien as warm and affectionate as Cherkassky though without a trace of whimsy, and Godowsky’s teasing elaboration of the Minute Waltz.

Heard on this form Berezovsky is the pianist of your dreams; and it only remains for me to add that he plays the third rather than the second version of Op 25 No 1 and that Warner’s sound is superb. Prolonged applause celebrates Berezovsky’s phenomenal achievement and I for one would have been happy for it to ring out for ever.