This enchanting recital suggests a young pianist who, free from hothouse competition pressure (she won first prizes in Italy’s 1999 Pinerolo and America’s 2001 Van Cliburn arenas), has blossomed into an artist of rare musical grace and fluency. Olga Kern brings a personal and improvisatory style to Rachmaninov’s once neglected, now ubiquitous, Second Sonata and, despite her inborn virtuosity, she never sacrifices poetry to obvious display. Indeed, her performance is sufficiently sensitive and exploratory as well as brilliant to almost convince me that Rachmaninov’s drastic 1931 revision – where the sequences inseparable from his style are brutally truncated – is a viable alternative to his 1913 original. Both here and in the early Morceaux de fantaisie textures are kept light and scintillating, rhythms buoyant and enlivening. What charm and ease of manner in the 1940 revision of the Serenade, what teasing style and piquancy in the Polka (even Godowsky was daunted by its intricacy).

She makes light of Taneyev’s fearsome fugue in his Op 29 and throughout this entire recital you never sense a pianist studio-bound but rather someone who, enviably liberated, relishes everything she offers. Liadov’s and Balakirev’s gentler romantic musings are as convincing as the latter’s Islamey which is both fastidiously written as well as the ultimate white-knuckle ride for the pianist. You may remain puzzled by Kern’s inconsistent pauses at the end of phrases in Islamey but such idiosyncrasy seems marginal when set beside her effortless command, colour and character. Described as ‘brilliant, glassy, supremely aggressive and dazzlingly virtuosic in the Horowitz manner’ (The Washington Post) Kern remains ‘brilliant’ but also fine-toned and true to her own lights. Sheer talent does not come more transparently and, to top it all, Harmonia Mundi’s sound is of demonstration refinement and quality.