‘I have combined pieces which have accompanied and reassured me in seemingly small, but ultimately crucial moments of my life’, writes Sophie Pacini about her mixing and matching various Chopin works on her latest album. That’s all well and good but it’s the performances that matter, not her pretentious ‘Puzzle’ programme concept, nor the philosophical twaddle and self-absorbed air permeating her booklet notes.

In a catalogue overstuffed with recordings of Chopin’s First Ballade, Pacini’s rhetorical gestures impeding the coda’s momentum render the performance uncompetitive. Ditto her mincing diminuendos in the First Impromptu’s main theme. The pianist fusses over the charming G flat Waltz, Op 70 No 1, while her subjective touches and floating cantabiles in the posthumous waltzes and F minor Op 70 No 2 seem more authentic and work beautifully. Also worth noting are her carefully calibrated trills in the C sharp minor Nocturne.

Among the Chopin Étude selections, the C major Op 10 No 1, C minor Op 25 No 12 and ‘Winter Wind’ Op 25 No 11 stand out for Pacini’s sweepingly solid waves of arpeggios. I like her animated basic tempo for the C sharp minor Étude, Op 25 No 7, despite the outsize climaxes. The B minor ‘Octave’ Étude, Op 25 No 10, boasts powerful outer sections but the central major-key episode transpires impatiently in Pacini’s hands. By contrast, her three selections from Scriabin’s Op 11 Preludes provide a languid respite, and since they’re influenced by Chopin, they comfortably slip into this well-engineered recital without feeling out of place. In short, this release encompasses not so much a profound ‘puzzle’ as an interesting running order of mostly Chopin works in generally fine performances.