Leopold Godowsky once bumped into the young Abram Chasins. ‘Is it true’, he asked, ‘that your Rush Hour in Hong Kong has been published six months and is already in its 16th edition?’ ‘Why yes, Mr Godowsky.’ ‘You know, I was never crazy about that piece’, teased Godowsky, ‘but so bad I didn’t think it was.’ It’s an anecdote Chasins recounts in his book Speaking of Pianists, arguably the most important and perceptive book written about the so-called Golden Age of piano-playing.

And it is by these two works that Chasins (1903-87) is chiefly remembered, apart from his stalwart work as a broadcaster. Almost all the works presented on these two CDs were composed in the late 1920s; 60 per cent of the 46 individual titles are first recordings.

Chasins is a member of that select group of composers who have composed 24 (or 25) Preludes in all the major and minor keys. These are on disc 1 (32'06"). Many are more like études, demanding a virtuoso technique. The writing is economical and full of character, betraying the composer’s thorough immersion in the works of Liszt, Rachmaninov, Debussy and Scriabin – and none the worse for that. Chasins himself, writing in the third person, was of the opinion that ‘he was unwise to publish more than a third of them’. Too harsh, I think.

Disc 2 of ‘Other Works’ (57'54") confirms Chasins as a musical sponge, able to parody and pastiche to his heart’s content – and still sound original and convincing. The Master Class portrays four very different piano students; Keyboard Karikatures are three affectionate, knowing tributes to Rachmaninov, Godowsky and Bachaus [sic]. There is a transcription of the famous Gluck Melody (a rather over-ripe alternative to Sgambati’s) and an outstanding fantasy à la Godowsky on themes from Weinberger’s Schwanda the Bagpiper. Narrative: Remembrance of Things Past (1942), the longest work here (8'16"), which Chasins thought his finest, failed to float my boat, but I was enchanted by the seven little gems that make up Piano Playtime (1951) – the great William Kapell recorded four of them in 1952 – and Chasins’s biggest success, the Three Chinese Pieces. Benno Moiseiwitsch made recordings of two of them in 1927. And what’s good enough for Moiseiwitsch is good enough for me.

Margarita Glebov first appeared in these pages in 2010 with an imaginative collection of impromptus, since when she has given us excellent discs of Lyapunov (3/14) and a selection of works by Golden Age pianist-composers (10/16). Though hardly prolific, and keeping a determinedly low profile (at least on this side of the Atlantic), Glebov is a terrific pianist, able to charm and thunder as required or happy to dazzle with nimble-fingered joie de vivre. She has, in short, a natural affinity with this pianist-composer corner of the repertoire to which Chasins proves to be such an unexpectedly effective contributor.