Chopin’s four rondos for solo piano make a pleasant sequence. In the first two we can see him struggling to find his unique voice (they were written in his mid-teens); the Rondo in C, Op 73, is more usually heard in its piano duet version than the original heard here; and the Rondo in E flat, Op 16, again too seldom heard, is one of the last works Chopin wrote in the crowd-pleasing brilliant style. Elżbieta Karaś-Krasztel plays Op 1 with a quiet hand and a lovely, even tone (the piano is closely recorded but not uncomfortably so). The simplicity and directness of her approach is entirely appropriate and, indeed, engaging. But as we progress to Op 5, a feeling of déjà vu begins to descend.

The Rondo à la Mazur sounds the same – an almost unvarying mezzo-forte dynamic and the same tempo moderato throughout – and, though the Rondo in C is invested with a little more vim, by the time we get to the main (allegro vivace) section of the Rondo in E flat we have to admit that Karaś-Krasztel comes across as elegant but bland. For Op 16 at its best, turn to Horowitz or, better still, Anatole Kitain in 1938. For all four Rondos with real character, go for Naxos’s Idil Biret.

The Fantaisie in F minor, played in the same Warsaw radio studio in 2010, 15 years later than the Rondos, is warmly recorded in a performance of some depth and obvious affection. This is the finest playing on a disc with the not overly generous timing of 52'54". Jeremy Nicholas