It seems only yesterday that I heard Cordelia Williams at the University of Sheffield in a selection of Vingt Regards, following on from her 2015 Messiaen project with the poet Michael Symmons Roberts. My students were in equal measure dazzled and perplexed, but unanimously impressed by the virtuosity. I personally found the colouristic palette restricted, but Williams’s poetic shaping certainly made its mark. Seven years on, that poetry, now informed by greater pianistic maturity, is still fresh and natural.

‘Cascade’ refers to a poem by Rilke and, as Michael Quinn’s booklet essay painstakingly explains, represents the ideas of fragmentation and pluralism as epitomised by the four works on the disc. Beethoven Bagatelles bookend the recital: the microcosmic C major WoO56 is delivered with thoughtful quietude, while the multiple facets of Op 126 are imbued with intimate shadings, not all of them predictable (for instance, the ethereal oasis prior to the ending of the last of the set). If I observe that Williams’s sound is still rather plain compared to the eloquence of Sudbin or the fantasy and drama of Anderszewski, this is to suggest that she is approaching the level where comparisons with the best are meaningful.

Williams is just as sensitive to the quick mood shifts and mercurial flights of imagination of Prokofiev’s kaleidoscopic Visions fugitives. She is particularly successful in numbers where she can highlight poetic aspects – take, for example, the bold yet touchingly vaporising ending of No 16 or the dramatic tension of No 15, whose brutality she resists until it inevitably prevails at the end. Other facets of Prokofiev’s multiverse are short-changed, certainly by comparison with the likes of Melnikov, whose virtuosity and orchestral palette cast multiple spells.

The storytelling world of Schumann’s Waldszenen is right up Williams’s street and she offers another carefully considered performance in which nothing is played for cheap effect. Once again, however, the range of colour is restricted, and I wonder whether adverse recording conditions are partly to blame. To truly ‘see beneath the surface’ – to use Quinn’s booklet-note title – and experience a veritable ‘cascade’ of musicianship, I recommend Volodos’s cultured tone, sharply profiled phrases and warmly coloured textures.