These compact discs include many of Argerich’s most celebrated DG recordings. Of Bach’s four keyboard Toccatas, the C minor is probably the most familiar. It likely dates from 1717, the final year of Bach’s employment at the ducal court of Weimar.

Schumann began his G minor Sonata in 1833 but the work remained unpublished until 1839. He revised both the outer movements. Indeed, the finale was entirely re-written at Clara Wieck’s suggestion. Its four-movement structure may have inspired the sonatas of the youthful Brahms, who was so completely befriended by the Schumanns fourteen years later. The Op. 79 Brahms Rhapsodies are a product of his maturity, composed in 1879 and published the next year, dedicated to Elizabeth von Herzogenberg, a lifelong friend. Brahms cast these two works in ternary form, whereas Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies in binary form: an initial slow lassú followed by a lively friss.

Liszt’s Sonata in B minor is his largest work for solo piano, written in a one-movement form comprised of several sections played without pause that influenced such later composers as Strauss, Tchaikovsky and Schoenberg. Liszt was also a major influence on Maurice Ravel. Both Jeux d’eau of 1901 and Gaspard de la nuit of 1908 partake of the elder composer’s piano style, the latter work indeed becomes something of a summation of it, especially in the first and last of the three sections, all inspired by poems of Aloysius Bertrand.

Chopin introduced his Andante spianato and Grande polonaise brillante at a benefit concert in Paris in 1835 but it dates from five years earlier. The first section in G, at times like a barcarolle, is followed by some fanfare-like flourishes and then the Polonaise, which is in the highly remote key of E-flat.