Saskia Giorgini, of Dutch and Italian heritage, has just released her first album of Debussy which, in terms of secure yet unobtrusive technique and richly realised imagination, stands proudly beside her magnificent Liszt recordings.

The first of the Deux Arabesques is crisp, yet delicate and fully sentient. The voice-leading is superb. The second is pert and witty. In both works, Giorgini’s preternatural ability to shape the topography of a piece with perfect acuity is on full display. The seldom-heard D flat Nocturne is redolent with atmosphere. The finesse of the pianissimos in the concluding measures seems to evaporate into thin air.

Giorgini’s approach to Pour le piano is essentially dramatic, but hers is a many‑hued drama of subtlety and understatement. Following the exuberance of the Prelude, the Sarabande suggests a whispered confidence of the utmost intimacy. The Toccata fairly soars on wings of vivid contrast and kinaesthetic delight. The glimpses of the terrain below would be dizzying were it not for the thrill of flight.

‘Pagodes’ captures Debussy’s oriental mode with many-faceted understanding, completely devoid of caricature. The allusive ‘Soirées dans Grenade’ speaks the very language of Andalusia, while ‘Jardins sous la pluie’ evokes a variety of meteorological phenomena, from delicate raindrops on petals and leaves to wind and thunder.

To hear Giorgini play the two books of Images is to hear distilled, in purely musical terms, the palette and brushwork of Monet and Renoir. From ‘Hommage à Rameau’, imbued with near-tragic longing, to the exquisite rhythmic grasp and polyphonic resourcefulness of ‘Mouvement’, you may find yourself, as I did, struggling to imagine when you might have heard it better.

The intelligence and sensual pacing of L’isle joyeuse is better experienced than described. In all these works, Giorgini’s ability to choose the inevitably apt tempo is uncanny. That attribute of any pianist worthy of the name, namely a plenitude of calculable levels of sound at the quiet end of the dynamic spectrum, finds in her a happy home. From a pianist who is not yet 40, one can only imagine the musical joys that lie ahead.