Concertino en style classique has four short movements (17'56" overall) of chic Baroque pastiche, the first movement at times edging dangerously close to plagiarism. JSB would surely have smiled approvingly, especially at the effervescent courante-like third movement and the syncopated rhythms of the finale. Throughout, the woodwind section is kept inventively busy, underpinned by discreet kettledrum contributions. Luiza Borac finds just the right playful touch for a work which would do well in the concert hall should anyone have the imagination to follow her, Walter Gieseking and Clara Haskil’s example.

Again, Lipatti’s 1941 Sonatine merits wider attention, ‘a trifle in three brief movements,’ wrote the composer, ‘which I finished in two days [using] purely Romanian themes and with much brio’. It is dedicated to Lipatti’s teacher and fellow countryman Mihail Jora (1891-1971) and is written for the left hand alone. Jora had only one leg. Who said composers don’t have a sense of humour?

Borac plays with the same breezy confidence as Lipatti himself, who recorded both works in 1943. They made it on to LP (Electrecord ECE0766/7) but not, as far as I’m aware, on to CD – and anything of Lipatti is worth promulgating, despite the foggy sound. These, the two sombre but rather attractive Nocturnes, the masterly transcriptions of Bach’s Pastorale for organ, BWV590, and two movements from the Hunt Cantata (one of which is ‘Sheep may safely graze’) appeared on a 1988 Dynamic CD. The new versions are superior in every way.

Not included on the Dynamic disc is Lipatti’s Sonata in D minor, written when he was nearing his 15th birthday. No Korngold he – it sounds like a student work in which he is still finding his own voice and, in the final Allegro, showing us that he can write a competent Baroque fugue. This is a world premiere recording, as is that of the Fantaisie (1940), Lipatti’s longest and most harmonically advanced work – five dissonant movements using folkloric melodies and complex rhythmic patterns. Completing the survey is Lipatti’s arrangement of Albéniz’s Navarra. I can spot no significant changes to the standard completion of the work by Déodat de Séverac, and Miss Borac takes a disappointingly literal view of the piece. Compared to the blistering accounts by Rubinstein (1929) or Nelson Freire (1984), it’s an enervating Navarra.