Elisabeth Lutyens (1906 83) is not noted for her piano music but wrote for the instrument throughout her career, and this first volume in Martin Jones’s survey focuses on work from her final decade or so. To anyone labouring still under the misapprehension that Lutyens’s music was arid or devoid of expression, the Seven Preludes (1978) should come as a stern wake-up call; each piece vividly evokes the links to Keats referenced in the titles, whether the opening ‘Whose name was writ in water’, with its limpid flow and wistful aura (inspired by the inscription on the poet’s grave), or the succeeding ‘Night Winds’, a compellingly atmospheric nature poem. ‘Starlight’ has a glitter worthy of Van Gogh. The Five Impromptus of the previous year, perhaps, accord more closely to general misconceptions of Lutyens’s music in that they are abstract and less overtly descriptive, but they are no less poetic for that.

The earliest work here, Plenum I (1972, the first of a set of four for varying instrumental forces), is the most severe in tone and the toughest nut to crack. There is little of the neo-Debussian textures of the Preludes or any attempt to ingratiate the ear. The other two single-span pieces, by contrast, are wholly involving with their freer structures – perhaps testimony to their watery origins. The Great Seas (1979), the longest work on the disc, is positively expansive, turbulent, violent, soothing and sensual by turns. Next to it, La natura dell’Acqua (1981), Lutyens’s final piano composition, seems almost a trifle, but nonetheless affecting.

I have not mentioned Martin Jones’s playing yet, but it is tribute to his expressive intelligence and natural (self-effacing?) pianism that it is Lutyens that one hears throughout, not Jones, which is exactly as it should be. This will not appeal to all tastes, but with superb sound from Resonus, it is strongly recommended.