Listening to Peter Jablonski’s new Ondine album, pianists and lovers of piano music may be prompted to ask: ‘Where has Grażyna Bacewicz been all my life?’ True, her piano music has been recorded before, including Krystian Zimerman’s 2009 reading of the Second Sonata (DG, 6/11). But Bacewicz’s performing career was primarily as a solo violinist and orchestral player, and she composed significantly more for violin and chamber ensembles than she did for solo piano. Nevertheless, based on personal accounts, as well as the highly idiomatic and often virtuoso music itself, Bacewicz must have been a formidable pianist. Born in Łódz´ in 1909, she studied there and in Warsaw and Paris, where Nadia Boulanger taught her composition and André Touret and Carl Flesch violin. Though her piano music reveals an acute awareness of many of the composers of her day – certainly Szymanowski, her teacher at the Warsaw Conservatory, but Bartók, Prokofiev and Shostakovich as well – Bacewicz’s voice is unmistakably her own. Jablonski has chosen representative works composed between 1949 and 1957, 12 years before Bacewicz’s death aged 60. He plays them superbly.

The Concert krakowiak lives up to its title as a brilliant showpiece inspired by the folk music of the region around Kraków. Jablonski veers in and out of its mercurial shifts of mood and texture with aplomb. The dozen Études recorded here deal with a variety of technical challenges, focusing on the intervallic complexities frequently encountered in piano music of the first half of the 20th century. Throughout Jablonski is sensitive to the innate expressive character of each étude, foregrounding subtle coloration and rhythmic vitality.

The two sonatas – the first a four-movement work from 1949, the second in three movements from 1953 – provide the greatest interpretative challenges. Bacewicz speaks her mind and heart succinctly, and Jablonski elucidates her taut structures with clarity and precision. The last movements of both sonatas incorporate folk elements, played here with wit and elegance. Most impressive, perhaps, is the slow movement of the Second Sonata, suggesting extraordinary loneliness and desolation. The vivid atmosphere Jablonski conjures stops just sort of menace.

The twofold pleasure of this release is experiencing the interesting if unfamiliar music of an important woman composer, played by a pianist in the full flower of his mature, imaginative artistry.