Anna Gourari aims to cultivate a dark and mystical persona with her ECM debut, judging from the cover art, the booklet photos and the annotations, along with her juxtapositions of Bach transcriptions and 20th-century fare. The disc opens with an introspective and frankly plodding rendition of the Bach-Busoni Ich ruf’ zu dir that seems to slow down as it progresses. By contrast, Gourari more succesfully sustains her equally protracted Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland. Gubaidulina’s Chaconne fares best in broader, louder sections, although brisker, more rhythmically engaging episodes don’t offer the kind of varied articulations and dance-like impetus one hears in rival recordings from Andreas Haefliger (Sony, 5/95), Béatrice Rauchs (BIS, 10/97) and Claire-Marie Le Guay (Acoord, 8/10). Similarly, Gourari exchanges the jazzy lightness and ironic zest Boris Berezovsky brought to the Hindemith 1922 (Warner, A/06) for something altogether bleaker and grimmer.

Gourari’s Bach-Busoni Chaconne is one of the most riveting on record. She plays the opening theme with very slight delays at the ends of phrases that help set up the serious, large-scale scenario that follows. You don’t notice slow pacing per se so much as unified tempo relationships, close attention to inner voices and controlled bravura. In the Bach-Siloti B minor Prelude, Gourari observes repeats other pianists mostly ignore, and imparts welcome and meaningful shape to the arpeggiated left-hand accompaniment, which, in turn, provides a base from which the right-hand line floats without effort. Gourari’s piano benefits from ECM’s highest engineering standards.