Deux-Elles’ sleeve aptly quotes Debussy as saying that it is the composer’s privilege to set the poetry of night and day ‘within a rhythmic framework’, an ambiguity central to his genius. Beneath an outwardly opalescent surface lies a burning clarity, a discipline that the pianist ignores at his peril. Few composers have demanded so high a degree of fantasy and fidelity. Alas, you can almost hear Debussy’s most frequent cry to aspiring interpreters – ‘You don’t play what I write’ – when you listen to Melvyn Tan’s enthusiastic, colourful asides but cavalier way with the text. Why so loud and prosaic in ‘Le vent dans la plaine’ when it is marked pianissimo? Try the opening and close of ‘La cathédrale engloutie’ and you will be made uncomfortably aware of an instability the opposite of profondement calme. There is confusion at 0’39” in ‘La danse de Puck’, something that should not have escaped the producer’s ear and eye, and the sentimental smear at un peu en dehors in ‘Feuilles mortes’ breaks any sense of mystery or enigma.

Time and again Tan plays havoc with Debussy’s rhythmic impulse and in the two final Préludes he sounds pushed close to his technical limit. There is an impressive sense of desolation in ‘Des pas sur la neige’ but, overall, an aura of caricature and distortion rather than personal empathy clouds performances that in no way compare with the finest available.