Chopin may have brought the étude out of the practice room and into the salon but for some performers there’s a sense that these are still above all technical exercises to be surmounted. That’s the nagging feeling I had while listening to Sonya Bach’s new recording. The very opening track, Op 10 No 1, has a kind of bullish virtuosity as if she’s delighting in the physicality of this music without necessarily going beyond that. As the set progresses, there’s a sense of sameness about her approach – the second, fourth, fifth and eighth, for instance, are all glittering but relentless, the third a moment of respite but with few of the colours or shadings that great pianists (such as Perahia and Freire) find. No 9 offers something more interesting, with a dialogue between the billowing lines, the close nicely ethereal. By the time we reach the final étude of the set we’re back in auto-tempest mode.

Bach begins Op 25 with a promising shimmering quality to the harp-like notation, over which she brings out Chopin’s scintillating countermelodies. And her high-flung scales just before the close of No 2 are given with vivacity. But the galloping figuration of No 3 seems to thwart her – she’s not lacking in technique per se but musically seems unsure what to do with it – bringing out this line and that but underplaying the piece’s obsessive quality; Perahia, on the other hand, recolours it with a touch of pedal here, a change of phrasing there; Sokolov takes things further, rounding off the étude with a wonderfully deliquescent flourish.

And so it continues – the darting difficulties of No 5 are leaden alongside the glee and subtlety of Freire, while the glorious melody of the middle section lacks conviction in Bach’s hands. Similarly, the extended lines of No 7 are timidly voiced, while No 9, though setting off at a good pace, finds its wings clipped by the overly prominent bass octaves (0'26"); Freire is much more readily airborne here. Octaves become an issue in No 10 too, where there’s no lack of ferocity but either the acoustic or her pedalling result in a muddy sound, while the Lento section lacks a sense of line – how much more potent Sokolov is, building from a hushed fragility. There’s no mistaking the dominant motif in the 11th, Bach ensuring it impinges relentlessly through the triplet semiquavers. And for the final étude we’re simply back where we started with Op 10 No 1 – the arpeggios hard-edged and glittering. Her Trois Nouvelles études are no more satisfying – with a lack of singing line in the first and no magic in the guileless second, while the mercurial playfulness of the third gets lost in translation.