This most enterprising recital commences Jean-Marc Luisada’s exclusive contract with RCA. Suavely and satisfyingly recorded in the Grand Hall of The Arsenal, Metz, all his performances evince a special affection and commitment, delectably so in the case of Bizet’s charming Chants du Rhin. Such music, with its Gallic and transparent memories of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, makes naivety a delightful rather than churlish or derogatory term, and the selection of Faure Nocturnes, journeying through grave serenity (No. 1) and decorative ardour (Nos. 2 and 6) to the dark, obsessive and opalescent worlds of Nos. 7, 12 and 13, is unusually inclusive. Here Luisada occasionally loses impetus, more particularly in those inflammatory moments in the late Nocturnes which positively cry out for drama rather than restraint. At 2'50'' in No. 1 his observation of rests is too literal to be truly dolce (the second time round, less so). Again, in the allegretto molto moderato from No. 6 (one of Faure’s few works to border on popularity) a certain stiffness is later resolved in the allegro moderato with its magical, idealized bird-song. But it is most of all in No. 13, that incomparable elegy, that I missed the sort of incandescence in the central, soaring and plunging scales and arpeggios that can give the lie to Faure’s supposed conservatism. No. 12, too, where lyricism is refracted, as it were, through a distorting mirror to become dissonance and a thinly masked violence, needs an altogether keener edge. None the less, all these performances have a distinctly personal profile and attest to an exceptional musical quality.'