From most pianists, this sort of grab-bag programme would tend to be a collection of personal favourites, perhaps played from idiosyncratic points of view, providing charming but ultimately little more than highly personal readings. Not so with Leon McCawley. Obviously, it’s a programme of long- and well-loved pieces, adroitly arranged around a larger thematic idea, highlighting the individual qualities of each work, while acknowledging their commonalities. Yet one also has the sense that every piece has been minutely and thoroughly examined, distilled so that its fundamental essence has been freshly and sometimes surprisingly revealed. Bookended between the two Norwegians Sinding and Grieg are composers of Hungarian, French and Russian origins, making this varied programme richly cosmopolitan.

Nestled amid a bouquet of French Impressionism are four works of Debussy and two of Ravel, played with idiomatic flair, special acumen and bracing originality. I’ve returned to them repeatedly and with growing pleasure. If Godowsky’s transcription of ‘The Swan’ of Saint-Saëns seems rather grotesquely overdressed, that doesn’t preclude its delivery with style and sensitivity.

McCawley is a perceptive and persuasive Liszt player and the four pieces, drawn from the First and Third Années de pèlerinage, stand, in terms of both length and portent, as anchors of the programme. Each is of course a beautifully executed masterpiece of tonal scene painting. Listening to ‘Au bord d’une source’, for instance, one can easily imagine crouching near an Alpine spring, watching the play of sunlight on the bubbling waters. McCawley’s approach to the Alpine storm depicted in ‘Orage’ is distinctive in his refusal to let the aural landscape become swamped with pedal. The glassy surface of ‘Au lac de Wallenstadt’ fairly shimmers as the surrounding mountains seem to echo the slightest sound. And when, at bar 144 of ‘Les jeux d’eau á la Villa d’Este’, the superscription from St John reveals that, in addition to being a depiction in sound of Ippolito II d’Este’s Renaissance gardens, the piece is also a metaphor for Christian mysticism, it seems, well, perfectly natural.

All told, this scintillatingly varied recital combines sensuous virtuosity, compelling charm and musical probity. Highly recommended.