In 1828, the firm of Richault issued the Op.1 of a 14-year-old prodigy, Charles-Valentin Morhange, who had already begun to advertise himself as Alkan. After winning several first prizes at the Paris Conservatoire, ‘Alkan’ had started making a stir in aristocratic salons as a pianist of prodigious powers. On one of those salon evenings, he encountered Liszt, two years his senior, leading to a wary friendship, a lifelong rivalry and guarded mutual respect.

Some flavour of Alkan’s extraordinary touch at the piano may be gleaned from the runs and figurations decorating that Opus 1 as if with silver streamers: a set of variations on a theme from a concerto by Daniel Steibelt. While Steibelt himself has long been consigned to the pages of musical encyclopedias, Alkan lives on as one of the most original composer-performers whose time has belatedly come in the last few decades, and especially in the hands of Mark Viner.

During its course, this cycle of Alkan’s complete solo piano music has attracted extravagant praise from critics everywhere, encapsulated by Jeremy Nicholas in Gramophone: ‘he can claim a place at the top table as one of the pre-eminent Alkan players de nos jours.’ As Viner elucidates in his authoritative booklet essay, Alkan’s Op.1 – remarkable in itself for a teenager, if musically almost unrecognisable to most of us as the sound of the composer to come – is the curtain-raiser to an extraordinary display of keyboard wizardry.

Titled Les Omnibus, op.2, is another variation set demanding particular facility with repeated notes. Opus 3, a little rondo on a nursery rhyme, is followed by the fireworks of the Rondo brilliant, op.4.

There follow elaborations or variations on arias and themes from Donizetti and Bellini, dry as the best champagne.

The ‘Variations quasi fantaisie’ on a Neapolitan barcarolle hint at the darkness in much of Alkan’s mature output, before Viner signs off with more fistfuls of flourishes and roars of keyboard lionism in the Rondo chromatique, op.12. Many of the works are little known even to Alkan aficionados, making this latest volume an essential acquisition for all adventurous pianophiles.