The recording was made in the Salon de Musique, Hôtel de la Fondation Singer-Polignac, Paris. This has an acoustic that I thought worked very much in Gasparian’s favour for the Rachmaninov programme I welcomed in the May 2022 issue. Here, I’m afraid, it works against him – unless, that is, you like your Debussy played in a vast empty ballroom. It is a sound, however, that clearly pleases the pianist, for in a booklet interview he reveals that ‘we worked very hard on the positioning of the microphones, and we constantly adjusted the regulation of the instrument: the challenge was to obtain a piano sound that was as un-pianistic as possible, if I dare put it like that’.

But this is only one unsatisfactory element of the album. I am, in general, puzzled by Gasparian’s response to Debussy. Awash with pedal, his tempos are not just slow. They are lethargic. The Delphic dancers, for example, albeit labelled Lent et grave, seem to be on Valium (4'07" as opposed to something like Gieseking’s 3'15" in 1938 or Bavouzet at 2'54"). The sudden outbursts in ‘Le vent dans la plaine’ had me reaching for the score to check Debussy’s dynamic: forte. Gasparian startles you with fortissimo stabs without registering the following piano marking. Surely ‘La fille aux cheveux de lin’ (Très calme et doucement expressif) should inspire more tenderness than this boldly assertive take. No, as a set this is uncompetitive when compared with the likes of Gieseking (1938 and 1953), Michelangeli, Freire and (my current benchmark) Bavouzet.

And it is Bavouzet who again offers pianism of a far more refined character in Estampes. On the second volume of his superbly recorded intégrale, ‘Pagodes’ and ‘La soirée dans Grenade’ are languid and atmospheric, with ‘Jardins sous la pluie’ played with an exhilarating light touch and minimum pedal. Gasparian’s USP is the premiere recording of his father’s resourceful 2009 transcription of ‘Rondes de printemps’: No 3 from (the orchestral suite) Images, clever programming when you know that Debussy quotes the folk song ‘Nous n’irons plus au bois’ both here and in ‘Jardins sous la pluie’. Transcription fanciers will ignore any of the above misgivings and go for this.