For those unfamiliar with the name (as was I until recently), Lada Valesová is a prize-winning pianist who studied at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, where she now lectures. The intelligent programme on this new Avie disc is her own, showcasing four pupils and teachers who became seminal figures in 20th-century Czech music: Janácek and Haas, Suk and Martinu. Contrasts abound, but Suk’s delightful Spring (1902) – the earliest work here – proves stylistically unsatisfactory as the conclusion; its mainstream Romanticism is out of kilter following an hour of (for the times) individualistic modernism. Janácek’s In the Mists (1911-12) or the Suite (1935) by Haas would have worked better.

In the Mists is nicely done, though Valesová’s touch is steelier than Hélène Couvert’s. If pressed, I prefer the latter’s slightly dreamier, more impressionistic way with the music. Valesová comes into her own, though, in Intimate Studies, an artificial construct published in 1994 of 11 fragments that Janácek notated between 1876 and his final week in August 1928. There are autobiographical connections behind many of these tiny gems, some relating to his muse Kamila Stösslová or to his daughter Olga. Haas’s Suite is more stylised, but vividly so, as is the brief Allegro moderato (1938).

Film en miniature may not be vintage Martinu but it fits neatly with Janácek’s works and especially the Haas pieces, which share dance-based derivations. Valesová relishes their brittle vigour as she does the diminutive Spring in the Garden (1921). Avie’s sound is excellent if a shade clinical. All in all, this is a thoroughly recommendable disc.