When James Rhodes first appeared on the scene, his punk-rock stage attitude and harrowing backstory sometimes pulled focus from his obvious pianistic gifts and genuine sense of interpretative inquiry. As he now approaches 50, Rhodes seems to have evolved from upstart to outlier, judging from the present release. Indeed, its very title, ‘Manía’, has little to do with the generally reflective mood characterising the pianist’s interpretations.

The repeated notes in Albéniz’s ‘Asturias’, for example, focus more on relaxation and evenness rather than whirling drive. Rhodes’s beautifully spun top line in Brahms’s E major Intermezzo, Op 116 No 6, contrasts with the accompaniment’s processional gravitas. While Rhodes plays the Strauss/Gieseking ‘Serenade’ in a less slapdash manner than in the transcriber’s 78rpm performance, I would have liked even clearer foreground/background textural distinction. At nearly eight minutes, Chopin’s Op 27 No 2 emerges less of a nocturne than a sleepwalk, while the second of Ginastera’s Danzas argentinas is also a concentrated study in slow motion.

Yet Rhodes justifies his sustained deliberation in the Bach/Siloti Andante by virtue of a hypnotic legato worthy of Sviatoslav Richter. Those who can get past Rhodes’s somnolent opening pages in Chopin’s E major Nocturne, Op 62 No 2, will be rewarded by the pianist’s powerfully built-up central climax. In Víkingur Ólafsson’s transcription of the Adagio from Bach’s Solo Violin Sonata No 3, Rhodes double-dots the up-beats and basically presents a dark, brooding sound world that’s light years apart from the urbanity of Ólafsson’s own recording. This selection proves the perfect lead-in to Rhodes’s comparably big-boned Rachmaninov C major Moment musical, with the bass notes ringing out like the Royal Albert Hall organ at full tilt. The same composer’s Op 33 No 3 Étude-tableau and two pieces from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet make their massive and foreboding points long before Rhodes concludes each of these selections. However one responds to James Rhodes’s music-making, there’s no question that he still commands the will and the means to convey his ideas in sound.