The Italian pianist Andrea Vivanet is smart to mix a representative spectrum of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’s basic compositional forms – toccatas, variations and fantasias – on his new album of selected works. Six of the most engaging sets of variations are interspersed with several of the more austere, virtuosic toccatas, along with two of the ‘echo’ fantasias in which precisely repeated musical fragments are deployed without any of the tedium one might expect from such rigorous repetition.

It’s a delightful mix of music by a composer whose music too often comes off as stern and abstract. Vivanet is clearly devoted to Sweelinck’s lighter, brighter side, bringing a nice dancelike bounce to the theme of the variations built on ‘Onder een linde groen’. Much of Sweelinck’s music lives as happily on the organ and harpsichord as it does on the modern piano, and Vivanet takes his cues from the step-like gradations of volume from both organ and harpsichord. Throughout, the echo effects of the fantasias offer a model for interpreting the other works, including the toccatas, which can feel a bit black-and-white in their interpretative reserve.

Other pianists, Glenn Gould in particular, were drawn to the chromatic agonies and contrapuntal complexity of Sweelinck, but not Vivanet. Sample the clear articulation of the melodic line and the conscientiously smooth keyboard technique in his performance of the Variations on ‘More Palatino’ and you may, for a moment, imagine he is living in the world of Haydn and Mozart. Not so, but the illusion comes from the performer’s conviction that Sweelinck’s purpose was to charm and entertain, rather than overwhelm with erudition.