It’s easy to hear why Steven Beck’s staggeringly meticulous interpretations of Charles Wuorinen’s piano works pleased the late composer. He clearly believes in this music, and is consistently attentive to its multilayered contrapuntal rigour, sharp dynamic contrasts and dramatic mobility.

Beck imparts a specific character to each of the six short pieces comprising The Haroun Piano Book – based on materials from Wuorinen’s opera Haroun and the Sea of Stories – while revelling in moments of unfettered virtuosity, such as the final selection’s unison runs and declamatory octaves. Although the composer asks you to segue from one movement to the next with brief fermatas in between, I personally would stretch out the pauses longer in order to demarcate each piece more clearly.

Heart Shadow is also based on the opera, and often conveys a feeling of a lyrical procession. There’s no questioning Beck’s textual integrity and bedrock adherence to Wuorinen’s metronome markings, yet would slightly slower tempos and rounder detached articulations bring out more of the music’s harmonic riches and turbulent qualities? On the other hand, Beck weighs the Étude’s chordal balances, rates of decay and dynamic gradations to perfection. If Doubletake represents Wuorinen’s arid ‘serial killer’ persona, Beck’s bracing rhythm and impressive hair trigger repeated notes more than compensate. Originally written for Peter Serkin, the Intrada, Adagio and Scherzo are stand-alone pieces that can also be played together as a triptych. Serkin’s recording of the Scherzo (Naxos, 7/11^US) has a litheness and flexible note-to-note fluidity that I somehow miss from Beck’s more literal reading.

The pianist’s tempos throughout Bach’s Goldberg Variations tend to be brisk and are unified by a common pulse. Yet despite Beck’s well-modulated sonority and crystal-clear fingerwork, his contrapuntal playing generally makes more of a vertical than a horizontal impression.

In Var 6 (the canon at the second), for example, you notice each measure’s down-beats more than the way the imitative lines weave in and out of each other. The decorative writing in Var 16 (the French ouverture) ought to take rhetorical wing, rather than be shoehorned within Beck’s fast, unyielding tempo. Beck perfunctorily speeds through the minor-key Vars 15, 21 and 25 as if he was indifferent to their extraordinary harmonic tension. And while he takes all of the repeats, he rarely differentiates them.

The cross-handed variations convey a palpable semblance of two keyboard manuals in tandem, yet lack the joyous propulsion and humour of Glenn Gould’s similarly crisp 1981 readings. Yet more than a few hints of heartfelt lyricism emerge in Var 8’s conversational lilt and Var 13’s transparent voicings. For an encore, the pianist turns in a beautifully nuanced A major Prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1, followed by a scampering Fugue that playfully points up the cross rhythmic phrases. If only Beck had loosened up comparably for the Goldbergs!