The 1990 winner of the Leeds International Piano Competition ranges far and wide and, having recently introduced us to the piano concertos of Artur Napoleão and Henrique Oswald (Hyperion, 11/14), now embarks on the daunting task of the complete solo piano works of Sergey Rachmaninov.

While Peter Avis’s booklet essay is usefully chronological, Pizarro’s programme thankfully is not. The first of the initial two CDs (there will be seven in all) opens with a pair of works from 1931, the Variations on a Theme of Corelli and the revised version of the Sonata No 2. Pizarro produces a gorgeous tone from his chosen Yamaha CF6 (a seven-foot grand with almost the sonority of a nine-foot) and the 20 brief variations are as lovely as I’ve heard. Like Richard Farrell (now on Atoll), he prefers to play down the bravura aspects of this most intimate of the composer’s late works. There is no lack of bravura in Pizarro’s resonant, lucidly articulated account of the Sonata which, for once, is not a hybrid conflation of the original and revised versions that many pianists have felt entitled to serve up in recent years. In the six Moments musicaux composed in 1896, the first works in which Rachmaninov truly found his own voice, Pizarro plays the later version of No 2 (Allegretto) as recorded by Rachmaninov himself in 1940. This is superbly done but the slow Moments (Nos 3 and 5) are too measured. Here I prefer Howard Shelley (his complete works on Hyperion from 1985), who also brings a lighter touch to No 4 (Presto).

In the earlier seven Morceaux de concert, again Pizarro takes a more languid view than Shelley of the slow numbers (though nothing as extreme as Idil Biret on Naxos). The ‘Valse’, however, benefits from the pianist’s innate charm, and the famous ‘Humoresque’ compares favourably with the composer’s own airy insouciance. Contrasted with the Morceaux, the second set of Etudes-tableaux from 1917 gives us the mature Rachmaninov, with Pizarro once more alive to the drama and physicality of the music with a cushioned, penetrating depth of sound from forte to fff. This is a fine, deeply felt account of Op 39 but less successful as a whole (and especially in the great E flat minor Etude) than my personal benchmark, Rustem Hayroudinoff on Chandos. So, with a few question marks, much to relish and look forward to.