In the booklet notes, the Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki states that part of his intent in devising a programme entirely of preludes was to liberate the form from its usual expectation, namely as a curtain-raiser for something else. His tools in this endeavour date from Bach’s first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier from the 1720s to a pinnacle of Romantic pianism, Chopin’s Preludes, continuing through those of Rachmaninov to near the turn of the 20th century, plus Messiaen in the late 1920s, and Górecki’s first published compositions in 1955. He certainly demonstrates the variety of utterance to which composers have attached the title ‘prelude’ over 230 years.

Lisiecki’s strongest suit is the three pieces he has selected from Messiaen’s Huit Préludes pour piano, both from the beauty and sensitivity of the performances and for having resisted the temptation to let Debussy represent the native-born French in this line-up. ‘The Dove’ is straightforward and deeply affecting. ‘Song of Ecstasy in a Sad Landscape’, at seven and a half minutes the longest single piece on the album, conveys a rich complexity and narrative ambiguity. In these and in ‘The Light Number’, Lisiecki employs a richly varied arsenal of touch strategies and colours. I also find Lisiecki very persuasive in two of Górecki’s Four Preludes, difficult works that he delivers with intense commitment.

At the earliest end of the chromatic spectrum there is a distinct falling off. Lisiecki seems to be among those pianists who insist on playing Bach isolated from any context of 18th-century Baroque style, departing from the mainstream contemporary understanding of his music’s meaning. Fortunately, with Rachmaninov we’re in more congenial interpretative waters. The album begins and ends with Chopin, and it is surely by his interpretations of these works that the success of this recording will be judged. In the Op 28 set, there are a number of memorable moments. The G major sails at a terrific clip buoyed by a perfectly ebullient and secco left hand. The fleeting C sharp minor is as mercurial as one may ever hope to hear it, and if the B flat minor musters a fine fury, the concluding D minor makes its points rhetorically rather than with strength of sonority. The stand-alone Prelude, Op 45, an exquisite late piece, seems here oddly reticent, harmonically distended and lacking urgency.