We all have our musical heroes – the singers whose voices we prefer over all others, the instrumentalists we idolise. When it comes to pianists there is a huge field to choose from – the advent of recorded sound over a hundred years ago has allowed us to listen across the 20th century. It produced giants of the keyboard from Rachmaninov onwards: Schnabel, Gilels, Arrau, Horowitz, Cortot, Richter. The list is long, and closer to our own time we might include Argerich, Pollini, Brendel, Lang Lang and Kissin.

For me, Murray Perahia, the man known as the “poet of the piano”, sits at the top of the tree – yet I’ve never had the opportunity to hear him in the concert hall. Perhaps his name is not as well known in Australia as it might be: he’s never been here, though we can look forward to his debut down under in 2013. Until then, it’s his recordings we have to rely on, and there are plenty, covering a broad range of repertoire from Chopin to Beethoven, from Bach to Handel, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Brahms. My all-time favourite is a CD that includes his peerless performance of a collection...