André Tchaikowsky (1935–82), Polish-born but based in Britain, hit the headlines when he left his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use in productions of Hamlet – even appearing on a postage stamp with David Tennant.

He survived the Nazi occupation of Warsaw hidden in a cupboard for two years.

Although Tchaikowsky – no relation to Pyotr Tchaikovsky – was one of the finest pianists of his era, his true calling was as a composer.

This first conspectus of his piano music features the first recording of his powerful, craggy Piano Concerto (1973–75), the epigrammatic Inventions he dedicated to a series of friends and his only mature Piano Sonata – evidence of the magnitude of the loss from his early death from cancer, aged only 46.

Tchaikowsky’s music is being rediscovered: his only opera The Merchant of Venice was premiered during the Bregenz Festival this year, and this CD, the first of a series, is released in conjunction with the publication by Toccata Press of A Musician Divided: André Tchaikowsky in his Own Words, an annotated edition of his candid diaries.