Piotr Anderszewski’s last release, a Gramophone Award winner, carefully curated excerpts from Book 2 of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (2/21). This recital could hardly be more different: three less canonical works that are earthy and folk-infused where the Bach is cerebral in inspiration, rough and spontaneous in temperament where the Bach is meticulously disciplined. (The second volume of Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path is especially rough, an editorial tangle never finalised by the composer.) Yet the performances are just as spot on as the Bach performances were.

As always, Anderszewski’s focus is astonishing. Whether it be the stinging rhythms of Bartók’s second Bagatelle or the exquisitely graded dynamics of his secretive account of Janáček’s Andante, whether it be the resilience of the quirky gestures in Janáček’s Allegro or the perfect balance of the superimposed voices that weave through the fourth of Szymanowski’s Mazurkas (by comparison, the 1946 recording by dedicatee Arthur Rubinstein sounds blurry), the level of detail is apt to leave you speechless. For most pianists, attaining that kind of exactitude requires a Faustian bargain in which the soul of the music (if not of the performer) is sacrificed. Not so here. As you’d expect from a pianist who treated The Well-Tempered Clavier as a series of character pieces, detail is always in the service of the music’s spirit.

Or, to be more accurate, in the service of the music’s spirits. Each miniature in this kaleidoscopic collection has a different personality. The range is vast; but giddy or sober, direct or disorientating, high-minded or venomous (for example, Bartók’s last Bagatelle, later orchestrated as a poison-pen portrait of violinist Stefi Geyer after she had rejected him), each piece emerges, often startlingly, with its own flavour intact. Granted, there’s a potential danger in this kind of variety: it’s hard to keep listeners engaged for an hour with a string of independent pieces lasting, on average, less than three minutes each. Anderszewski meets the rhetorical challenge, though, and keeps us not simply engaged but enthralled.

There are no notes other than a very brief comment by the pianist – which means there’s no explanation of his moderately individualistic selection, ordering and editorial choices. But that’s a minor flaw, given the calibre of the playing.