There seems to be no other recording currently available of this particular programme. All four of Edward MacDowell’s sonatas have been recorded several times, though only one artist, so far as I know, has recorded all four on one disc: Donna Amato on Altarus from 2003 in indifferent sound but sparkling performances. None has ever been in danger of entering the standard repertoire. They are direct descendants of Schumann, Brahms and the Austro-German school in which MacDowell (1860-1908) immersed himself during his 11 years spent studying in Europe.

The fact is that they are, like much of MacDowell’s output, inconsistent in their interest and inspiration. It’s best to cherrypick him. Take the First Sonata (Sonata tragica), which begins in dramatic fashion, written on three staves, ff, maestoso, heavy chords, promising. Brahms comes to mind. Yet memorable ideas in the succeeding pages are hard to come by, like trying to grab a bar of soap in the bath blindfold. There is, too, a melancholic trait that pervades all the music – even the Mendelssohnian scherzo movements of the two sonatas, the latter of which boasts a genuinely impassioned finale that is well worth hearing and is very well played by Bartoli.

Woodland Sketches confirms MacDowell, like Grieg, with whom he has much in common, being happier as a miniaturist, though these equivalents of the Norwegian’s Lyric Pieces are less consistently memorable in their themes – pace the very first of the set, ‘To a Wild Rose’, by far and away the most popular piece MacDowell ever wrote. The Italian performs these with delicate affection.

Though a fine pianist who exploits the dynamic range of the piano with a full, rich tone, marking the composer’s frequent violent mood swings with enthusiasm (ffff and pppp requests are not uncommon), I was not convinced by his pp leggiero playing in fast passages. His phrasing in the ‘elf-like’ (MacDowell) second movement of the Eroica, for instance, is uneven and lacks the requisite lightness of touch.

The piano is presented in forensic close-up, but not unpleasantly. The booklet, with its exhaustive list of all the numerous (mainly minor) piano competitions Bartoli entered earlier in his career, would have benefited from closer inspection by a copy editor. All in all, this is a release to return to occasionally but not on repeat play.