This is the first volume of an intended series devoted to the piano music of Theodor Leschetizky (1830-1915), best known as one of the two most influential piano teachers of the second part of the 19th century (the other being Franz Liszt), whose students included, inter alios, Paderewski, Schnabel and Moiseiwitsch. It comes on the back of Tobias Bigger’s 2007 recording, which I much enjoyed, of music by four other eminent Leschetizky pupils, namely Mark Hambourg, Ignaz Friedman, Michael Zadora and Ossip Gabrilowitsch.

Leopold Godowsky, writing in 1901, thought that many of his friend’s piano pieces were ‘really beautiful, so graceful and pianistic, without much depth …’ That’s not far off the mark. Previous CDs devoted to Leschetizky’s music have left me interested but underwhelmed. Rather than cherry-pick the best items, Bigger has taken the dangerous route of programming opus numbers complete (five in total, 14 separate pieces all told), an option that generally means having to include the chaff with the wheat. Here, though, I believe he has struck, if not gold, then at last a seam well worth mining. There are few miss-hits among these premiere recordings, with many savoury morsels to be picked out and relished individually.

Bigger is not only the pianist for this project but also his own sound engineer, producer and editor. Chapeau! If the burnished piano tone of his Bösendorfer is on the airless side in this acoustic, and the playing occasionally a little heavy-handed, neither is uncomfortably so. After the two substantial Klavierstücke, Op 38, a minuet and mazurka 1890s style (the latter featuring some deliciously camp glissandos), we move to the more interesting Quatre Morceaux, Op 36, each one dedicated to an illustrious acquaintance: Anton Rubinstein, Bülow, Henselt (whatever did they make of the ‘Gigue à deux voix’ and the Humoresque, with their ambivalent accents and decidedly mischievous characters?) and Annette Essipoff, who was to become Leschetizky’s second wife.

The Deux Morceaux, Op 43, are no less enticing, despite the dreary nomenclature. Serenata (No 1 and dedicated to ‘mon cher élève Mark Hambourg’) could be mistaken for a piece of English light music from the 1930s. Pastels, the title of a further Quatre Morceaux (Op 44 from 1897 and dedicated to Maurice [sic] Rosenthal), contains a simple Prélude, another quirky Gigue and Humoresque, and a fearsome ‘Intermezzo en octaves’ marked molto vivace and leggiero. Finally, there are the Nocturne and Scherzo that comprise the Zwei Klavierstücke of Op 47, dedicated to Marie Rosborska, Leschetizky’s fourth and final wife. In the latter, as elsewhere in bravura passages, Bigger does not quite let himself off the leash enough to play truly molto vivace, con fuoco or più vivace. A small niggle beside such an illuminating, indeed, revelatory view of a composer far more interesting and accomplished than I had hitherto realised, not so much lightweight as light-hearted.