The Swiss pianist Fabrizio Chiovetta has amassed an impressive discography on the Claves, Palexa and Aparté labels over the past dozen years. A student of Dominique Weber, Paul Badura-Skoda and John Perry, Chiovetta now teaches at the Superior Conservatory in his native Geneva. His approach to these well-known works of Schumann is strikingly original and yet perfectly idiomatic.

The C major Fantasie from 1836 is justifiably considered by many to be Schumann’s masterpiece for the piano. Chiovetta explores the full dimensionality of its magnificent architecture with an inerrant sense of rhetorical aptness. With an ever-attentive ear to Schumann’s polyphony, Chiovetta’s textures are perfectly gauged and expertly delineated. Lyricism reigns supreme, with beautifully shaped lines. In the kinetic realm, accelerations and retardations are organic, natural functions of musical expression, never seeming abrupt or superimposed. And what of those perilous leaps that conclude the second movement, the mere thought of which causes the most fearless of pianists to break into a cold sweat? Here they sound poised and balanced, leaving an impression that approaches ease. Overall, this is a Fantasie whose narrative unfolds with natural inevitability and enormous tenderness.

The Arabeske ripples by with insouciance, punctuated by introspective episodes of disarming sincerity. Chiovetta meets Scenes from Childhood on its own terms, without false naivety or the wink of an eye. ‘An Important Event’, ‘Blind Man’s Buff’, ‘Almost Too Serious’ and ‘The Poet Speaks’ are among the standouts in this exquisitely wrought performance. The programme concludes with No 30, the only untitled piece from the second part (subtitled ‘For more grown-up ones’) of Album for the Young.

Chiovetta has a wide variety of touch and colour at his disposal but it is the richness of his musical imagination that is most captivating. This release will doubtless satisfy discriminating Schumann aficionados as well as devotees of individual piano-playing at the highest level. Heartily recommended.