In the press release of his third disc for Alpha, the French winner of the 2021 Queen Elisabeth Competition compares Chopin’s Third Sonata to the Mona Lisa: just as Leonardo’s painting needs no make up (though some have applied it), so Chopin’s sonata requires no embellishments: ‘it’s beautiful as it is’. The tumultuous drama and tempestuous passion with which Fournel infuses the outer movements especially suggests that he may be under-selling himself. Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, painted in 1830, just 14 years before Chopin’s composition, springs to mind as a kindred spirit.

If the overall approach is broadly convincing, at times even thrilling, thanks to the virtuosity with which it is put across, there is still room to query its effectiveness. The first movement in particular feels at times a little too obvious, its fieriness coming at the expense of the kind of inwardness and noble elegance Stephen Hough finds in it. Fournel’s decision to observe the repeat also feels at odds with the forward momentum and drama that drive his interpretation. The Scherzo whizzes along playfully, with dazzling fingerwork: a little less charm than Hough but more effervescent energy. The slow movement starts monumentally but never fully engages with its magical reveries – compare with Pletnev, who takes that side of things to over-indulgent extremes. Hough again strikes a near-ideal balance between intimate eloquence and a poignant sense of inevitability. The finale is best suited to Fournel’s exuberant pianism, the more so because his athleticism is tempered with plenty of room for respite.

Textural and timbral complexities clearly hold no terrors for Fournel, whether in Chopin or Szymanowski, and his decluttering of the latter’s forestations of notes is of the highest class. The two sets of variations bookending the disc are both youthful display works, the Op 3 set being the more modest in proportions but still given to bluster. The Op 10 Variations on the Polish tune are melodramatic almost to a fault, especially in the heart-wrenching Funeral March. Compared to Zimerman’s benchmark recording, Fournel opts for a drastically slow tempo here, with diminishing effectiveness. Zimerman is also the more convincing in the throat-clearing Introduction, capturing its doloroso quality as perceptively as the innocent ‘simplicity’ of the theme itself. Still, Fournel’s dazzling virtuosity is not to be denied, especially in the bravura fireworks of the final variation. An impressive disc, then, and one that merits comparison with the finest available, even if ultimately it has to yield the palm to them.