Saleem Abboud Ashkar is a 29-year-old Nazareth-born pianist whose first disc in EMI’s ‘Debut’ series consists of familiar and substantial musical fare. His Mozart is fluent and mature, and includes a finely poised central Adagio, making you quickly abandon pen and paper and listen in admiration.

Alas, I wish I could be similarly enthusiastic about his Schubert and Brahms. Here, diffidence and generalisation are slim alternatives to greater character and stylistic awareness. I do not ask for an idiosyncratic or interventionist view but Ashkar’s studio-bound reading surely reflects too little of Schubert’s bleakness and audacity, of music where, to quote Thomas Nashe, ‘brightness falls from the air’.

The Brahms Variations are even more inhibited. True, Ashkar is resilient and outgoing in Var 1, resolute and energetic, as marked, in Vars 4 and 10, and he brings the heaven-storming fugue to a suitably exultant close. But he is much less beguiling in lyricism, lacking piquancy and charm in Vars 17, 19 and 22, missing the vivacita cross-accentuation in Var 7 and starting Var 23 with a resounding forte when it is marked piano. EMI’s sound is excellent but the accompanying notes, with their reference to the ‘cosy’ lyricism of Schubert’s early sonatas, are superficial.