The Irish pianist Máire Carroll learned and performed (and has now recorded) the entire set of Philip Glass’s Etudes as a lockdown project. There’s much to admire in her interpretations, although some succeed more than others. She takes No 1’s dynamic gradations on faith, and truly sings out the rising and falling right-hand melody. The ‘bell’ tones framing No 2’s alternating duplet and triplet phrases are placed in perfect perspective, although No 3 could stand a lighter, more urgent touch. Yet by articulating some of No 4’s left-hand ostinato patterns in a detached manner rather than treating them uniformly legato as marked in the score, the music gains appreciable contrast and character. It’s not easy to make every note count in the relatively simple No 5, yet Carroll does so with the utmost expressive economy. Some may prefer Yuja Wang’s beguiling colorations in No 6, although these draw more attention to the pianism than the music, whereas Carroll’s slightly slower and more literal-minded conception reveals the architecture behind the expanding and contracting repeated notes. But Carroll’s emphatic lefthand chords in No 7 grow ponderous as the piece unfolds, consequently drowning out rather than supporting the beautiful chains of trills. Her generalised and occasionally casual articulation throughout No 8 transforms the music’s inherent reserve into cocktail strumming. To my ears, her respectful yet rather low-voltage No 9 would have benefited from a faster, harder-hitting approach, along the lines of Víkingur Ólafsson’s DG recording. Conversely, Carroll takes assertive and powerful charge throughout the large-scale No 11, while her focused tempo and suave control of voicing allow the quasi-ragtime syncopations to establish a cumulative momentum. Ólafsson’s No 13 may be more ear-catching on the surface by virtue of his speed but Carroll’s more scrupulous phrasing and dynamic scaling ultimately prevail. She digs into the unintentionally humorous dissonances in No 14’s right-hand chords and casts No 15 in Lisztian light. No 20’s embrace of the piano’s full registers elicits a sonorous and sweeping reading that convinces despite Carroll’s tendency to overlook the softest dynamic indications. Among complete Glass Etude cycles, you’ll find more shimmer and transparency in Jenny Lin’s Steinway & Sons cycle, more wild and fervent abandon from Nicolas Horvath (Grand Piano) and a darker, more subjective expressive palette via Anton Batagov (Orange Mountain). But the best of Carroll’s playing on this well-engineered album serves Glass’s aesthetic with sincere and masterly integrity. Pwyll ap Siôn’s excellent annotations include a perceptive essay and a discussion with the pianist.