Normally one concludes a review with comments about sound quality, but in this case the engineering’s full-bodied piano sonority and palpable concert-hall ambience present a more colourful and three-dimensional side to Alain Planès’s artistry than in many of his previous Harmonia Mundi releases. This proves crucial in Bartók, whose jagged rhythms and asymetrical accents Planès consistently shapes with a wonderful variety of nuances and voicings. Take the Dance Suite’s Allegro molto, where the often muddy low-register chords and passagework emerge with greater transparency than usual, while the pianist’s subtle pedalling in the lyrical rising scales near the end allow a tangy hint of dissonance to peep through. Similarly, Planès plays down the Allegro finale’s biting propulsion in order to illuminate the harmonic complexity in the climactic polytextural writing.

The Sonata stands out for its long-lined breadth, in contrast to Zoltán Kocsis’s slightly drier and more acerbic reading (Hungaroton). The second selection in a group from the Hungarian Peasant Songs features pinpointed rolled chords and an ending whose tricky melodic ornaments are timed and articulated to magical perfection. However, Kocsis’s rhythmic liberties in works based on folksongs and traditional dances convey more idiomatic flair. In the Romanian Folk Dances, sample Planès’s earnest phrasing of the ‘Stick Dance’ alongside Kocsis’s tiny yet spine-tingling accelerations, or Planès’s even-handed way with the concluding ‘Fast Dance’ next to Kocsis’s whirling right-hand lines and jabbing left-hand accents. And so it goes with the Fourteen Bagatelles. One can say that Planès has served Bartók well, while Kocsis remains Bartók’s master.