While complete sets of Debussy’s and Ravel’s piano works abound, there is a dearth of similarly integral recordings of France’s still most-misunderstood composer, of music of a daunting emotional and technical intricacy. This makes the first volume of Jean-Claude Pennetier’s projected complete cycle of Fauré’s piano music doubly welcome. His is clearly a labour of love rather than duty and my guess is that Fauré, who was very particular regarding the performance of his music, would have welcomed Pennetier’s clear-sightedness and a musical assurance that avoids all exaggeration or sentimentality. His initial hesitancy in the Ballade blossoms into a suitably delicate brilliance, expressive freedom and power (Fauré dreaded pianists who played his music as if the shutters were closed). At the same time there is a percussive edge to his sound that can bring Fauré’s liquidity and iridescence down to earth. This is particularly true of the four Valses-Caprices, works of dazzling wit, elegance and urbanity, shimmering with what Ravel called Fauré’s “equivocations of harmony”. But where Pennetier excells is in the leap from such gaiety to the pained and cloistered world of the Op 103 Préludes. And whether in the blaze of defiance of Nos 2 and 4 or in the stifled progressions of No 7, he shows himself memorably sympathetic to Fauré’s troubled interior life during his last years. Less subtle and insinuating in early Fauré than Germaine Thyssen-Valentin (Testament, 8/02), Pennetier is nearly her rival in the later works. I look forward to follow-ups to this well recorded disc, though with the warning to all first-comers to Fauré: once this music gets under your skin you will be haunted for ever.