Moving from late to early Cherkassky, from the Ambassador Auditorium Recitals of 1981-1989, represents a wide curve.  And it has to be said that APR's 3 CD issue is an Aladdin's cave of pianistic magic, of performances where a technique as natural as it is astonishing is combined with a no less astonishing, piquant poetic impulse. Here is Cherkassky in all of his unique glory, some distance from those later performances which recorded near the close of his life are, for all their great moments, perhaps understandably less stable.
 
   Admirers—and whether enchanted or provoked, and who cannot be?-- will find several versions of Cherkassky favourites scattered throughout with differences, whether marked or marginal, evidence of the pianist's impulsive and spontaneous nature. CD 1 opens with Beethoven's Ecossaises, a playful tribute to Scotland, spun off in either version with all of Cherkassky's finesse and joi de vivre.
 
  A surpassing sense of the fleet and elfin in Mendelssohn's E minor Scherzo provides compensation for the missing fugue from the E minor Prelude and Fugue, but it is in a Chopin group on CD 2 that you hear Cherkassky's pianism at its most delectable. Chopin was very much at the heart of his repertoire, and it is in the E minor Nocturne, D major Mazurka, opus 33 No 2, the opus 10 No 4 C sharp minor Etude and the F minor Fantasie that you have treasurable, vintage Cherkassky. Tonally, the Nocturne sings with an iridescent cantabile that others can only dream of and his way with the Etude is a   scintillating alternative to, say, Richter's celebrated if manic charge.
 
   Among the many 'bonne bouches' is Saint-Saens Prelude and Fugue, a mock-serious take on an old form, spun off by Cherkassky with a wit and brio that were his alone to command, Liszt's D flat consolation is a  marvel of poetic delicacy and Chaminade's 'Autrefois' is old-fashiooned charm itself. Chopin's A flat Polonaise may be a delightful if decorative alternative to, say Rubinstein's blazing heroics, but who can resist a mischievous pointing inseparable from Cherkassky's genius in the Rachmaninov Polka, the nostalgic winding down in Lyadov's Musical Box, the dizzying whirl of the Toccata from Morton Gould's Prelude and Toccata and, of course, that Cherkassky and audience favourite, the same composer's Boogie-Woogie Etude.
 
    In three Liszt Hungarian Rhpasodie, Nos 5, 6 and 15 Cherkassky gives the lie to Edward Sackville-West's view that the Rhapsodies exhibit, 'hasty workmanship,  an expensive glare and theatricality. No 6 may be among Liszt's works written to delight and astound audiences, many of whom had come to see as well as listen, to ascertain whether Liszt possessed twenty rather than ten fingers, but given with Cherkassy's innate sense of style the music emerges beyond mere showmanship.
 
   There are large-cale offerings with Rachmaninov's Cello and Piano Sonata and Tchaikovsky's Second Concerto, the former with Marcel Hubert, the latter in the Siloti version and additional cuts with Jacques Rachmilovich and the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra. Cherkassky could be a notoriously capricious partner yet all whimsy in the Rachmaninov is replaced with a true sympathy for the composer, while the furious pace in the Tchaikovsky's finale must have taken conductor and orchestra to the very edge('sometimes in the rehearsal I play real slow. But then in the concert I play real fast. I like to keep everyone on their toes.').
 
    This album beyond price, is accompanied by oustanding photographs and the accompanying essay, if critically blunt, is a mine of information. I can only end by saying that my many meetings with Cherkassky which took place at the White House hotel, where the pianist lived in a tiny room skied at the top of the building, remain an indelible memory. At his greatest he could temporarily eclipse all interest in others. There never was and never will be anyone like him.
 
Bryce Morrison