Kit Armstrong opens his solo debut for Sony with a nearly-half-hour sequence of Bach chorale preludes. The pianist basically presents the organ text straight; and while he largely avoids the kind of doublings and outsize dynamics typical of Romantic-era Bach piano transcriptions, his masterful pedalling evokes an organ-like continuity of sound. Yet many instances of beautifully contoured legato polyphony result from Armstrong’s sophisticated fingerwork and hand balances, such as in Jesu, meine Freude.

The chorale prelude group leads into Armstrong’s own Fantasy on B-A-C-H (the pitches spelling out Bach’s name). Its first minute contains pretty, Messiaen-inspired high-register clusters, followed by nine minutes’ worth of arid, shapeless, tensionless and lifeless note-spinning. Pablo Casals was alleged to instruct students to ‘play Bach like Brahms’, and that’s essentially much how Armstrong treats the B flat Partita. At least he doesn’t slobber over the Preludium and Sarabande like his label-mate Simone Dinnerstein, but if you want similar tonal heft with genuine stylistic discipline, go to another Sony artist – Murray Perahia.

In a selection of pieces from Ligeti’s Musica ricercata, Armstrong’s expressive amendations sometimes overlook the music’s inherent irony and bite. For example, Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s stricter tempo in the Tempo di valse (No 4) evokes an appropriately deadpan and caustic mood that Armstrong’s gratuitous ritards entirely miss. Similarly, in No 10, Armstrong’s slight slowing-down in quiter passages softens the impact of the music’s cross-rhythmic displacements that Aimard illuminates. But Armstrong’s brisk dispatch of No 7 features unflappable left-hand ostinatos that any pianist would be happy to claim. OK, Kit, you’ve proved that you’re amazingly talented and smart. Now you can afford to lighten up.