Not just his music but even the name Semyon Barmotin (1877-1939) languished for decades in obscurity, Gérald Hugon’s booklet note acknowledging the circumstances and even place of his death as remaining a mystery. His earlier years were auspicious, this pupil of Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov writing several notable chamber and piano works published by the like of Belaieff and Jürgenson. As his Op 1, Tema con variazioni (1904) was clearly a statement of intent – an almost half-hour sequence on a theme whose formal intricacy yields numerous melodic motifs which the 12 ensuing variations explore via waltz and mazurka, an eloquently wrought Andante then on to the finale, whose martial undertow ensures a powerful resolution.

Exactly why Barmotin excluded two keys (F and B) from, and only indirectly referred to two others (E flat minor and A minor) in his Twenty Preludes (1910) is unclear but these four books of five pieces still evince a wide variety of expression in pianism that, less refined than Scriabin or less soulful than Rachmaninov, feels nothing if not idiomatically conceived. Listeners and pianists alike should try No 4, its content alternately brooding and passionate; No 8, whose harmonic subtlety veers towards late Brahms; No 13, imbued with undertones of Orthodox chant; and No 19, its tristezza marking suggestive of pensive emotion only just concealed.

This music requires advocacy such as it finds in Christopher Williams, probing its personality as surely as its technical mastery, his Steinway D accorded sound of realism and perspective. Hugon mentions a ‘remarkable’ Sonata from 1906 as well as a ‘notable’ Poème symphonique from 1930. For now, these premiere recordings of Barmotin are certainly worth investigating.