The seaside town of Guéthary lies on the south-west coast of France in the region known as the Basque Country. Pianist Aurèle Marthan describes this album as his homage to the region, and one can understand why. He was brought up there and the Festival Classic à Guéthary, which he founded and directed, celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Like the geographical area, ‘Guéthary’ travels across several musical borders, from keyboard pieces by Couperin and Rameau to film soundtrack arrangements by Alberto Iglesias and Max Richter, before ending with a brace of quirky, well-crafted pop-song arrangements for solo piano by Nicolas Worms.

Several pieces are chosen for their connection with the Basque region, such as the ‘Danse russe’ from Stravinsky’s Petrushka (the Russian worked on the piano arrangement while staying in Biarritz), while David Chalmin’s dreamy, Glass-meets-Ravel-like piano piece named after the town was written specifically for the album.

Despite these connections, the repertoire is ultimately bound together by Marthan’s own incisive, focused and dynamic performances. Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G provides the centrepiece (the composer was born some five miles south of Guéthary), and is presented here in an imaginative slimmed-down arrangement for octet by Lucas Henri. One can almost smell the sea air and taste the saline in the concerto’s energetic, shanty-like opening, with Marthan’s translucent piano-playing supported by the ensemble’s equally balanced accompaniment. The mood is heightened by the subtle use of accordion and percussion to duplicate some of the original score’s orchestral lines. Time stands still during Marthan’s reflective solo-piano introduction to the second movement, while the final movement bursts into spontaneous life before accelerating at breakneck speed towards an emphatic ending.

Although in several respects this is a very different take on Ravel’s concerto, some interesting parallels can be drawn with Cédric Tiberghien’s recent release with Les Siècles and François-Xavier Roth (Harmonia Mundi, 7/22). Both bring a chamber-music sensibility and vitality to the concerto, in addition to what Harriet Smith described in her review as Tiberghien and Roth’s ‘Gallic suavity’ – a suavity that’s blended here with more than a dollop of Basque boldness and brilliance from Marthan.