Since they offer so little opportunity for display, it’s perhaps no surprise that the Mazurkas should be somewhat less favoured than other genres by pianists seeking to make their mark in Chopin. Ivana Gavrić cannily exploits this gap, showing show how good taste and solid technical accomplishment can reap rewards. It’s hard to imagine anyone raising objections to her stylish, unexaggerated readings. And that’s not intended as a backhanded compliment, or as a hint that her temperament is in any way bland. She finds just the right weight for the melancholy of the A minor, Op 17 No 4, and the right degree of exaltation when Chopin’s imagination takes flight. It was an excellent idea to intersperse the mazurkas with the Berceuse and the odd prelude, nocturne and waltz.

All the same, I would love to hear what Gavrić would do with some of these pieces as encores, when the pressure to prove herself was off and she could play with more abandon. Quite unfairly to her, I put on some Arthur Rubinstein for comparison (including his miraculous account of the Berceuse – Philips, 10/98). And since my shelves are hardly groaning with CDs of the Mazurkas, I dug out my old Westminster LPs of Ryszard Bakst for good measure (can it really be that they never made it to CD?). Here, as I suspected, I found the extra lilt, charm, nuance and tonal shades I had been craving. Gavrić’s instrument sounds well enough recorded, but I wonder if it imposed slight limitations on her colouristic range.

A nice bonus on the new disc is Ate∞ Orga’s essay, or rather series of vignettes, built around quotes from commentators ranging from Chopin’s contemporaries (damning as well as laudatory) to TS Eliot and Cortot, by way of such curiosities as Gertrude Hudson’s description of the F sharp Nocturne as ‘quite Persian in style’.