For his fourth Hyperion album, Andrey Gugnin moves from Scriabin, Godowskian associates and Shostakovich to Grieg, where his stylistic and pianist touch is as sure as ever. His choice of a Bechstein reaps many benefits in terms of lightness, transparency and domesticity of scale, hardly ever leaving one hankering for the greater tonal richness of a Steinway.

Gugnin ripples his way through the Holberg Suite in its original piano solo guise, radiating poise, affection and respect for its Golden Age retrospection. The nine-minute Air sometimes outstays its welcome, but not here, thanks to its graceful articulation, avoiding any more stylisation than Grieg himself applies to its Bachian idioms. The Rigaudon, close cousin to a hornpipe in Grieg’s conception, brings the set to a smiling, Holbergian conclusion.

The Ballade on a Norwegian Melody may not have the flashiness or drama that would secure it a permanent place in the repertoire. Yet at its heart is a distilled and immensely touching sense of loss. Gugnin lavishes immense sympathy and finesse on it, keeping a close eye on the balance and emotional logic of the variations, and making a persuasive case that its absence from the concert hall is very much our loss.

The Lyric Pieces, it might be thought, need no special advocacy, given the standards set over the years by the likes of Gilels, Andsnes, Hough and Kozhukhin. But advocacy can take many forms, and Gugnin’s is as special as anyone’s as he follows Grieg’s flights of fancy into nature, mood-pictures and dreamscapes with equal acuity. Seen from a distance, these delicious miniatures are a bridge between Mendelssohnian Romanticism and Debussian modernism. But it’s always good to be reminded, as Gugnin so subtly and delightfully does, of their unique charm and sensibility, helped along by the perfectly judged perspective of the recording.