Just one concerto, plus the wonderful Paganini Variations for two pianos and the hour’s worth of solo pieces gathered on Ewa Kupiec’s new CD – for an accomplished pianist, Lutosawski was surprisingly reluctant to compose for the instrument. Or perhaps not so surprisingly, because Britten is another case in point. For the Pole even more than the Englishman, it was the colour of orchestral instruments that fired his imagination; and in his case especially, complex chords laid out for mixed-timbre ensembles.

So, while this disc is extremely valuable as a gap-filler (none of the pieces is claimed as a first recording but there cannot have been too many before now), the artistic pickings are relatively slim. The Piano Sonata of 1934 is a talented, sub-Ravelian exercise in three substantial movements, which the composer justifiably regarded as immature and which was only published posthumously on the permission of his heirs. The 12 Melodie ludowe (Folk Melodies), five Bukoliki and Three Pieces for Young People are attractive miniatures for pedagogic purposes, composed between 1945 and 1953, and typical of Lutosawski’s interests in folksong and Bartókian symmetry at this time. Only the Invention of 1968 comes from the years of his full maturity, and at less than a minute of modest Bartókian two-part linear counterpoint, even this is no more than a tiny postscript.

Which leaves just the Two Studies of 1940/41 as viable concert (or competition) repertoire. More than viable, in fact, since they are full of the kind of edgy, gymnastic energy – indebted to Prokofiev as much as to Bartók – that makes the Paganini Variations, composed at the same time during the German occupation, so invigorating. Ewa Kupiec offers sharply articulated, colourful performances, with the just the right amount of metal in the tone, and the full-bodied recording quality helps make the disc eminently collectable for the Lutosawski and/or 20th-century piano music specialist.