The latest release by the Canadian pianist Bruce Liu, winner of the 2021 Chopin Competition, is devoted to Tchaikovsky’s 1875 suite of miniatures, The Seasons. It’s a remarkable recording in many respects, including the purity of Liu’s piano sound, as well as his simplicity of utterance allied to a vivid imagination.

The Seasons was commissioned by Nikolay Bernard, the editor of a St Petersburg music magazine, who also provided the subtitles. Tchaikovsky began work on the suite shortly after the First Piano Concerto’s premiere and while he was still at work on Swan Lake. Liu highlights the variety of moods that can be discerned beneath the suite’s prevailing melancholy. Following February’s frolicsome ‘Shrovetide Festival’, ‘Song of the Lark’ from March emerges as a veritable pre-Bartók evocation of nature. August’s busy and lively depiction of ‘Harvest’ is followed by Liu’s richly textured ‘The Hunt’. In that favourite encore piece of Rachmaninov, ‘On the Troika’, Liu conjures the jocular pleasures of a sleigh ride.

This release will delight Tchaikovsky aficionados, offering a healthy, highly expressive and, above all, pleasurable approach to the piano on the most basic level. It demonstrates fresh music-making unadorned by superficial virtuosity or the encrustations of received wisdom. It may also leave you eager to experience more of the artistry of Bruce Liu.