Programmes that look good on paper often don’t add up to a convincing whole in concert or on disc. Fortunately, Andrew von Oeyen’s ‘Angels and Demons’ playlist makes intrinsic and organic musical sense. He begins the opening salvo, the Bach/Busoni Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, in long muted phrases, pedalling generously, yet resorts to insistent pounding at the climaxes. Bach’s G major French Suite alternates between gentle and rounded-off slower movements (the Allemande and Sarabande) and faster dances that tend to get thicker and heavier when the volume increases (the Courante and Gigue).

The Rhapsody from MacDowell’s First Modern Suite features positively demonic, earth-swallowing bass notes that almost render the rest of the music irrelevant. Based on this, you’d expect a Liszt Mephisto Waltz that dangerously hovers over the precipice in the manner of the young Ashkenazy or the old Horowitz, or Richter foaming at the mouth, or the controlled wildness of Samuil Feinberg’s legendary recording. Instead, von Oeyen plays accurately, cleanly and uneventfully.

One can’t really ruin Debussy’s ‘Clair de lune’, especially when served up in such a sensitive, rounded-off manner as von Oeyen does here. But his Bach/Marcello Adagio floats like dead leaves on still water: it’s earthbound rather than heavenly. Although MacDowell’s Witches’ Dance makes its virtuosic point, I admittedly remain spoiled by infinitely more scintillating interpretations from the 78 era (specifically Leopold Godowsky and Guiomar Novaes).

However, the Act 3 Bacchanale from Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila and the valedictory movement from Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus find von Oeyen finally letting go and opening up the full scope of his sonority and colouristic range. To conclude, the pianist decompresses with his piano version of the ‘In paradisum’ from Fauré’s Requiem. While von Oeyen’s transcription is effective enough, I vastly prefer the shimmering transparency and ethereal aura of Émile Naoumoff’s transcription of the entire Requiem (his stunning recording is hard to source but worth the hunt). So who prevails, the angels or the demons? Perhaps von Oeyen is too affable a pianist to take sides …