Do Anna Fedorova’s colourfully succinct descriptions of the works featured on this musical journey from darkness to light spill over into her actual pianism? Definitely yes in Scriabin’s Ninth Sonata, which opens the album. Granted, she may not take the composer’s sudden molto accelerando bursts on faith. But her gorgeously modulated trills and ecstatic long-lined climaxes give vibrant voice to Scriabin’s necromantic sound world.

In Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, Fedorova’s handling of the repeated figurations doesn’t match the evenness and delicacy of Behzod Abduraimov’s superior textural control and balance between the hands (Alpha, 2/24). However, she keeps ‘Le gibet’ animated and afloat by way of precise and seemingly three-dimensional dynamic gradations. Sometimes her optimistically fast pace for ‘Scarbo’ requires slight adjustments to allow all of the notes in a sweeping upward run to speak, yet many details command attention, such as the double-note sequence pulsating towards a shattering apex (7'00" 7'40").

If anything, Fedorova proves more insouciant and rhythmically incisive throughout the four movements of Falla’s El Amor brujo. Many pianists start the Dance of Terror too loudly and have nowhere to build, whereas Fedorova holds back to the point where the dissonances truly register. Following a dulcetly shaped Magical Circle, Fedorova alternately sails and gallops through the Ritual Fire Dance, albeit without the booming thrust of Alessio Bax’s bass lines (Signum – see above).

Although Fedorova plays the opening Promenade of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an appropriately bright allegro giusto, her little tenutos and tapered phrases draw more attention to the pianist than to the composer. So do the self-aware rhythmic distensions in ‘Gnomus’. But in ‘The Old Castle’, the pianist strikes a perfect balance between the melody’s espressivo directive and the G sharp pedal point’s understated lilt. In ‘Tuileries’, Fedorova, like too many pianists today, adopts the mannerism (or bad habit) of accelerating in the right-hand semiquavers, but her ‘Bydło’ powerfully fuses drive and gravitas. She speeds through the ‘Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks’ as if the poor feathered creatures had imbibed amphetamines, while underplaying the clear-cut contrasts in ‘Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle’ and the desolation in ‘Cum mortuis in lingua morta’. The pianist addresses the surface brio of Baba-Yaga’s ‘Hut on Fowl’s Legs’ but not the music’s slashing ferocity, yet her sonority and spirit considerably open up in every bar of ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’. Sample before committing to the Ravel and Mussorgsky, but the Scriabin and Falla are definite keepers.