Just as David Greilsammer’s ‘fantaisie_fantasme’ (Naïve, 12/07) alternated old and new music according to a mirror-like symmetrical game plan, ‘Baroque Conversations’ adheres to similar programming precepts. Greilsammer assembles four ‘mini-sets’, each containing three works. The first and third pieces are by Baroque keyboard composers, while the second is by a late-20th- or early-21st-century composer. Usually such programming ideas seem pretentious or sound forced but Greilsammer’s stylistic juxtapositions mostly work. For example, his delicately nuanced performance of Rameau’s Gavotte et six doubles slips easily into the short and sparse textures of Feldman’s 1963 Piano Piece for Philip Guston, whose soft terrain suddenly gets stampeded by the upbeat virtuosity of Soler’s Sonata No 84 in D. By contrast, Greilsammer’s animated and relaxed reading of Couperin’s Les barricades mystérieuses doesn’t hint at the loud, thick chords and flourishes that open Matan Porat’s WHAAM!, yet the latter’s soft passages and jazzy, aphoristic arabesques eventually relate to Handel’s D minor Suite that follows, especially in the unusually drawn-out yet well-sustained Sarabande.

One might be pressed to find a plausible tie between the pointillistic writing and skilfully textured repeated-note sequences throughout Nimrod Sahar’s Aux murailles rougies and Greilsammer’s stately, eloquently shaped Froberger and Gibbons performances that surround it. However, I should add that the pianist’s fast tempo and hair-trigger articulation in Gibbons’s galliard yields nothing to Glenn Gould’s breathtaking recording (Sony, 11/93). Selections by Frescobaldi and Sweelinck beautifully bookend Greilsammer’s translucent way with Lachenmann’s Wiegenmusik, which differs from Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s slower, more aggressive and dynamically contrasted traversal (Accord). In all, a stimulating, outstandingly executed and superbly engineered programme.