Seong-Jin Cho’s latest project shows all the consideration and respect for the music that we’ve come to expect from this South Korean artist. He talks in the booklet of how he has immersed himself in the world of the Baroque – and specifically harpsichordists’ approaches to Handel’s Suites – and it shows. We’re eased into Handel’s world via the F major Suite (HWV427), whose two Adagios, inward and wistful, contrast beautifully with the fast movements, Cho bringing a joyous élan to the fugal closing one, and exhibiting a slightly broader colour palette than Danny Driver’s stylish reading.

He’s equally alive to the improvisatory qualities of these Suites, in the Prelude to the F minor (HWV433), for instance, which also boasts a real sense of narrative to its Allemande and a fearless Gigue, which is beautifully phrased, despite going at quite a lick. These qualities can be found in the E major Suite (HWV430), too – Cho’s approach throughout is quite different from Richter’s, who beefs them up into something proto-Romantic (though still scintillating to my ears). The ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’ variations that form the suite’s last movement emerge with a refreshing inevitability, and thrill as Handel piles on the technical challenges.

From the early 18th century to the 19th: Cho imbues the theme of Brahms’s Handel Variations with real elegance. What I find particularly compelling about his performance is its airiness (very much in the vein of Perahia), with sparing use of the sustaining pedal, and the way he dispatches Brahms’s sometimes unreasonable technical demands with panache. He’s alive to the contrapuntal writing but also the work’s beauty, singing the line of the dolce Var 3, for instance, its charm set in profound contrast to the discombobulating accents of the following Vivace variation. The danger points where lesser artists can become merely aggressive, such as the military-sounding Var 7 or the Energico Var 10, are dispatched with a twinkle in the eye, though the switch to the minor for Var 13 is perhaps a little underplayed here: certainly compared to Plowright, who revels in its magnificent brutality, the latter also peerless in the fiendish Var 14, with its mix of trills and chords at speed. These are minor caveats, though, when so much works very effectively – Var 19, with its switch to 12/8, has a lovely playfulness to it, and the build-up through the final variations is wonderfully managed, from the musical-box delicacy of Var 22 to the relentless and increasingly ferocious Vars 23 and 24. In the Fugue itself, Cho is notably fast – very similar to Perahia, alongside whom Plowright seems too slow – finding a real joy within it, if possibly slightly underplaying its more mysterious moments. He calms down the drama with two final Handel pieces – the Sarabande from HWV440 and then the irresistible Kempff transcription of the Minuet from HWV434. Compared to the man himself (now on Decca Eloquence) Cho is too slow, but the haloed quality he brings to it is difficult to resist.