Among composer-pianists of his generation, Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015) was not so much an outlier as a throwback to another era. He advocated transcriptions when they were out of fashion, while his original works often used other composers as a jumping-off point. These traits fall directly in line with Stevenson’s hero, Ferruccio Busoni. And like Busoni, Stevenson’s piano-writing is idiomatic to the bone, if never attaining the scintillation and fluency of a Rachmaninov.

Happily, Peter Jablonski makes a judicious and cannily programmed case for the various facets of Stevenson’s keyboard aesthetic. His contrapuntal acumen prevents the Peter Grimes Fantasy’s burly textures from clogging, while smoothly integrating Stevenson’s telling use of extended techniques such as harmonics or plucked strings into the fluid fabric of his pianism. Interpretatively speaking, I heretically prefer Jablonski’s breadth and patience over the composer’s own recording (APR, 2/06).

In 1961 Stevenson extracted four of the most memorable moments from Paderewski’s 1901 political opera Manru, resulting in an effective suite, highlighted by Jablonski’s bracing, heel-clicking reading of its Cracovienne finale. I can’t fathom any reason for Stevenson merging the solo piano and orchestra parts in Mozart’s central Romance from the D minor Concerto, K466, other than because he could. Suffice it to say that Jablonski keeps all of the textural levels afloat and in perspective. He does so as well in a harmonically decadent update of the Quintet from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger for left hand alone.

Stevenson’s Six Pensées mix, match and graft sections of Chopin Preludes on top of one another in ways that sound forcibly contrived rather than cleverly creative. If there’s any real jazz in the Little Jazz Variations based on Purcell’s ‘New Scotch Tune’, I don’t hear it. Fake Percy Grainger, yes. Yet I’m afraid that not even Jablonski’s pianistic finesse can sell me on the Piccolo Niccolò Paganinesco, a rather clunky and harmonically drab set of variations on the ubiquitous 24th Caprice. Ditto the thick and overloaded Tauberiana. Still, one must acknowledge the meticulous preparation, the loving care and the seriousness of purpose informing Jablonski’s excellently engineered interpretations, as well as Anastasia Belina’s cogent and well-researched annotations.