Granados’s Escenas romanticas is a unique masterpiece, a veiled and ultra-Spanish tribute to the composer’s beloved Chopin (the subtitles, ‘Berceuse’, ‘Mazurka’ and ‘Andantino spianato’ are a giveaway). But if Douglas Riva’s enthusiasm is rarely in doubt, his recreation of this magical tapestry, with its shifting patterns of shadows and sunlight, hardly shows the pianistic range or, indeed, professionalism necessary for such subtly and opulently demanding pages. Heavy-handed and graceless, his playing lacks textural translucency and his rubato is strenuous rather than idiomatic and insinuating. His pedalling, too, is imprecise, obscuring the velocemente flights in No 3 and, more subjectively, a true sense of its con estasi.
Elsewhere, his playing is hardly more beguiling. In the Allegro de concierto (Granados’s most unapologetic showpiece) he allows the second subject to sag, failing to move forward with the necessary sense of line and propulsion, and in the haunting Danza lenta (quintessentially Spanish and a superb test piece for voicing and atmosphere) he is insufficiently ppp or evocative. Paisaje, with its memory of Liszt’s ‘Paysage’ from his 12 Etudes d’execution transcendante, is more successfully handled and Preludio and Allegro appassionata provide two first recordings. These oddly cosmopolitan works add little to our view of Granados’s identity, so although this recital is well recorded there is no comparison, even at a bargain level, with Alicia de Larrocha’s superbly aristocratic performances on both EMl and Decca or, more recently, with Martin Jones’s stylish and interior readings for Nimbus.'