Margherita Torretta will be a new name to many – this is the first time it has appeared in a review in this magazine – but she certainly deserves to be better known. She only decided to devote herself to piano-playing after suffering life-changing injuries in a house fire in her teens, but her first recording, in 2020, made those who heard it sit up. ‘Bang-on Scarlatti from out of nowhere’ declared one reviewer, and listening to that album of 20 sonatas it is hard not to agree that a major contribution has jumped straight into to the Italian master’s discography. She followed that with an album of sonatas by Galuppi, an opera composer whose keyboard output does little to excite, but now turns to a composer barely mentioned in histories whose music itself demands attention. Born in London in 1731, Elisabetta de Gambarini was a mezzo-soprano who sang in Handel’s oratorios, a harpsichordist and organist who performed in public, and a composer who may have studied with Geminiani. Here we get her complete works for keyboard, published in 1748 as Six Sets of Lessons for the Harpsichord, Op 1, and Lessons for the Harpsichord, Intermix’d with Italian and English Songs, Op 2.

But if Gambarini was in Handel’s orbit, her music is very much of the coming age. These are not Baroque suites thickened with counterpoint but slight-textured, multi-movement sonatas and single movements full of light. Their stylistic debt to Scarlatti is obvious and unsurprising given that composer’s strong effect on English keyboard composers of the time; it is unmistakable in the opening of Op 1 No 6 and the second movement of Op 1 No 2, but Gambarini avoids Scarlatti’s quirks and Iberian colourings, focusing instead on the incisive melodic contours, pre-Classical structural clarity and well-directed keyboard agility – she has a delightful way of allowing the two-part textures to blossom casually into quickening runs or arpeggios between the hands. They are not only individual but also, I would suggest, more likely to capture attention than a good deal of Gambarini’s keyboard contemporaries, whether Scarlatti-loving English such as Arne and Greene or galant Italians such as Galuppi and Alberti. She also shows a deeper and more serious side, for instance in the romantic Adagio of Op 1 No 3.

It helps, of course, that Torretta has such an intelligent way with them. It may be a little surprising these days to find a mid-18th-century keyboard composer being introduced to us on a Steinway, but Torretta’s ultra-discreet pedalling and pinpoint touch suggest the clean, quick delay of a harpsichord, while an ever-alert plasticity of both dynamic and tempo allows her to release the winning personality of this music. It is a pity that the booklet note got into a tangle with the titles (the F major sonata listed as Op 1 No 1 is in fact Op 1 No 3, and that shown as Op 2 No 2 is Op 1 No 2), but this release really is a lovely surprise.