Llyˆr Williams’s stroll round Mussorgsky’s Pictures gets better as it goes along. “Gnomus” is cautious and under-characterised, with little differentiation in dynamics; “Il vecchio castello” is achingly slow, with no sign of a troubadour singing by the castle walls. By the time we get to the “Ballet of the Little Chicks”, Williams has got into his stride, proceeding to a truly menacing “Baba-Yaga” and awesomely sonorous “Great Gate at Kiev”, though his stately tempo robs the finale of its cumulative power. Debussy’s triptych follows in sensitive, though not always acutely observed, accounts (for this, especially the last pages of “Pagodes” and the central section of “La soirée dans Grenade”, one turns to the magical Jean-Efflam Bavouzet – Chandos, 1/08). The three Liszt works round off this imaginative programme, concluding with the rarely heard third of his four settings of Ave Maria.

The lively acoustic of Wyastone in which this recital was recorded sometimes makes one yearn for the mellow analogue of a mono LP. Old technology might not capture the piano with such fidelity but it largely avoided any clinical sonic glare, the equivalent of reading by the harsh light of a fluorescent long-life bulb instead of the warm glow of the traditional filament.