Schumann’s Waldszenen as a set rarely comes up for review. A shame, for these nine miniature tone poems – composed, be it noted, in an astonishing burst between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day 1848 – make an attractive alternative to the over-represented Kinderszenen. These Forest Scenes, with their dainty titles (‘Lonely Flowers’, ‘Pleasant Landscape’, ‘Wayside Inn’) were popular for many years. We even find Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray (1890) looking through their pages at the beginning of chapter two. Zlata Chochieva characterises each one to perfection but in one respect she earns particular praise. By far the best-known of the set is No 7, the strangely entitled ‘Vogel als Prophet’ (‘The Bird as Prophet’), once a favourite encore and recorded by many great pianists. There are two different views of it: Cortot (1948) and Earl Wild (1987) offer twittering birdsong, while Paderewski (1926) and Myra Hess (1931) see it more as a wistful little meditation. Chochieva opts for the latter. Few of her peers, however, observe as acutely as she Schumann’s very precise pedal markings, clearly intended as an important part of the composition but rarely followed.

Ravel’s Miroirs continues the ‘out of doors, back to nature’ theme with its six (longer) tone poems, their titles more explicitly linked to their musical evocations and No 2, ‘Oiseaux tristes’, surely inspired by ‘Vogel als Prophet’. Chochieva, stylistically convincing in Schumann, here could be taken for a different pianist, so completely does she inhabit Ravel’s sound world. These are performances that compare favourably with Steven Osborne in his benchmark survey of the complete solo works (Hyperion, 4/11), Chochieva the more intimate of the two, and ‘Alborada del gracioso’ taken at an even brisker pace than the Scot.

Disc 2 begins with two of Liszt’s most technically challenging Transcendental Études (tone poems in all but name). Both of them leap off the page in Chochieva’s hands with fabulous left-hand articulation, tonal colouring and sheer pianistic relish. After experiencing the dancing lights of ‘Feux follets’ and a brutish snowstorm, Chochieva retreats indoors for the three movements of Petite histoire by Felix Draeseke. Piano buffs will be familiar with his concerto and sonata. These are pleasant enough Schumannesque ‘morceaux caractéristiques’ (as the title-page has it) entitled ‘Rêve de bonheur’, ‘Intermezzo’ and ‘Incertitude’.

Then we come to the Schulz-Evler Blue Danube transcription. Here Chochieva, like every other pianist, has to bear comparison with Josef Lhevinne’s incomparable (incredible?) 1928 recording. If this new account is your introduction to what is one of the best-loved (and most difficult to bring off) of all piano transcriptions, then you will not be disappointed. It is the dazzling tour de force it is intended to be and presented complete (Lhevinne omits the opening pages and makes several other substantial cuts). It is great to hear someone of Zlata Chochieva’s generation resurrecting the piece. She does not, though, eclipse Lhevinne.

Like the Schumann and Ravel sets, Chochieva ends not with a bang but a whisper: ‘The Night’s Music’, the fourth of Bartók’s Out of Doors, a cycle of five tone poems from 1926 that gives this programme its title. Has there ever been a more eerie, unsettling depiction of rural nocturnal sounds? Altogether a terrific programme from a greatly gifted pianist.