Impromptus may be the subject of Tomasz Lis’s solo CD debut but the pianist’s generally reserved and charmless interpretations suggest otherwise. Next to Maria João Pires’s disarming spontaneity and Artur Schnabel’s bracing intensity, the first of Schubert’s D899 Impromptus proves relatively stiff and oblivious to the music’s magical transitions from major to minor mode. Lis judges No 2’s dynamics intelligently but the right-hand runs are a shade careful next to Murray Perahia’s shimmering poise. Nos 3 and 4’s increasingly predictable ritards at phrase ends are the musical equivalent of speed bumps on a side street and just as irksome.

Similar expressive conceits in Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu come off better on account of Lis’s more translucent textures. His lithe and winged A flat Impromptu outer sections bracket a heavily dragging Trio. While the F sharp Impromptu can stand unusually slow readings (Arrau, for example), Lis’s enervated phrasing and tensionless central march die on the proverbial vine. But the G flat major, although similarly soft-grained, conveys sufficient poetic impulse.

Lis blends the Fauré First Impromptu’s gnarly figurations into Schumannesque blocks while stretching out the second theme to a fault; put on Jean-Philippe Collard’s brighter, clearer performance and the fresh air returns. He fares much better with No 2’s scampering quasi-tarantella main theme but returns to earnest, square-toed form for a straitjacketed No 3 that is far removed from Paul Crossley parsing the right-hand melodies so that they move over the bar-lines. While Collard graces No 4’s elusive harmonic sleights of hand with rhetorical insights and sophisticated rubato, Lis’s literal, ironclad, bass-heavy traversal sounds comparably Teutonic. The booklet-notes gush about the pianist and production team’s painstaking search for a perfect recording venue, and, indeed, the former East Berlin radio station they discovered may well be an acoustic gem. That still doesn’t prevent the piano sonority from becoming timbrally strident and diffuse in loud passages.