Brahms’ titanic F minor Piano Sonata was the centrepiece of Nelson Freire’s first ever solo recording, which was made in 1967 when he was 23 and released on LP by Columbia/CBS. It’s now available as part of a seven-disc Sony Classical box that bundles together all Freire’s early releases, and makes for a fascinating comparison with this new version, recorded at the beginning of this year.

Considering they were separated by almost half a century, the two sonata performances are remarkably close in their timing – in a work lasting over half an hour, the new one is just about a minute longer. The power and technical mastery of Freire’s playing have not changed at all, but there is a strikingly greater sense of authority and spaciousness in the new version, an instinctive sense of when to allow the music room to breathe (in the first two movements especially) and when it should move forward more urgently.

On the 1967 LP, two smaller-scale Brahms piano pieces, the B minor capriccio from the Op 76 set and the E flat rhapsody from Op 119, came after the sonata. Here, Freire follows it with a whole succession of miniatures, not only from Opp 76 and 119 (the complete set of the latter), but from the other late sets of pieces too, Opp 116, 117 and 118. He plays them in chronological order, before ending with the A flat Waltz from Brahms’ Op 39. The playing is of course compellingly accomplished – the B minor intermezzo that begins Op 119, which Clara Schumann described as a “grey pearl”, is a perfect example of his art – but there’s also a detachment about some of the performances that can keep this intimate, intensely personal music at arm’s length, and just takes the edge off the disc as a whole.