Pascal Rogé begins Debussy’s First Etude promisingly. He shapes the left-hand “five-finger exercise” in an appropriately plodding manner and plays the brusque staccato right-hand triplets against the left-hand duplets in bars 12 and 14 exactly as written: many pianists on record screw this up. But the unwritten ritard leading into the Animé ruins the new tempo’s very sense of surprise, while Rogé’s further tempo adjustments and heavy-handed articulation chain the music’s whimsy and airy animation to the ground.

The performance’s unevenness sets the tone for the Etudes to come. Rogé’s protracted and soggy traversal of “Pour les sonorités opposées” times out to nearly seven and a half minutes: quite a contrast to the stronger shaping Mitsuko Uchida achieves in 5'22". Similarly, Rogé dryly ambles through “Pour les quartes” in 6'43" whereas the far suppler Jean-Efflam Bavouzet clocks in at 4'54". In No 9 Rogé’s repeated notes are lacklustre and mechanical in comparison to Bavouzet, Uchida and Florent Boffard. However, Rogé’s ample rubatos work better in No 11 and in No 12’s central section, where they underline the music’s sexy harmonies in dark red ink. And the sonorous lilt Rogé brings to “Pour les octaves” often evokes the younger, more ebullient Rogé I remember from his 1970s Decca Debussy recordings. Yet despite their memorable moments, Rogé’s Debussy Etudes face tough uphill competition from Bavouzet and Uchida, not to mention Boffard, Alain Planès and an exceptional though hard-to-find edition on the ProPiano label featuring Ju-Ying Song.