Ayako Uehara is not only the first woman to win the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition but also the first Japanese pianist to win one of the more widely publicised competitions. And listening to her in her beautifully planned and enterprising selection of Tchaikovsky (charming miniatures contrasted with large-scale offerings such as the Dumka and the G major Piano Sonata) provides irrefutable evidence of her calibre.

Hear her in Pletnev’s arrangement of the Andante maestoso from the Nutcracker Suite for some magically singing lines (she gives new meaning to terms such as legato and cantabile) and a rich vein of full-blooded fantasy. The Scherzo from the Op 37 Sonata brims over with concentrated wit and zest, renewing a sense of how Schumann’s ghost hovers over Tchaikovsky’s slavonic surface. Had the composer heard these performances he might well have revised his characteristically gloomy view of his piano music as so many ‘musical pancakes’ quickly tossed and served.

EMI’s sound is immaculate and I can hardly wait to hear Ayako Uehara in the widest range of music, in Mozart and Beethoven, as well as Schumann, Chopin, Liszt. Here is a pianist who, unlike most young competition winners, is already a world-class artist.