I first became aware of the Russian-born UK-based pianist Dina Parakhina through chamber music collaborations with her violinist husband Yuri Torchinsky. Judging from her debut Piano Classics release, she’s also an authoritative soloist in her own right, and very much at home in Medtner’s music.

She launches into the first of the six Fairy Tales (Skazki), Op 51, in a manner not unlike the composer’s own recording (APR), imparting a strumming momentum to the semiquaver patterns in both hands. In contrast to Hamish Milne’s strict metrics (Hyperion), Parakhina’s spiky accents bring out the music’s dancing abandon. If No 2’s lyrical lines sometimes seem hectic, that’s because Parakhina is one of the few pianists to take the composer’s marked accelerandos seriously. Her rubatos in No 3 walk a thin line between espressivo and affettuoso, whereas the characteristically affettuoso Vladimir Horowitz plays relatively straight. She emphasises the Presto No 5’s long-lined asymmetry in contrast to Frank Huang’s rippling détaché articulation (Centaur, 7/21), while bringing out No 6’s syncopations and sudden dynamic contrasts that others tend to smooth out.

Compared to Marc-André Hamelin’s transparent cool in the C minor Sonata-Skazka’s first movement, Parakhina’s volatility embraces Medtner’s abbandonamente directive, arguably overdoing it in the process. She justifies a slower tempo for the Allegro con spirito finale through full-bodied left-hand chording with inner voices to the fore. The huge Night Wind Sonata finds Parakhina more vulnerable to catalogue competition. Because the pianist gets too loud too soon, she winds up shaping the Introduzione to heavier, more emphatic effect than Hamelin, while conversely underplaying the crucial transitional accelerando into the Allegro proper. She doesn’t differentiate Medtner’s pesante and cantando as clearly as in Kenny Broberg’s recent recording, nor do the lengthy sequences of leggerio passagework match Severin von Eckardstein’s breathtaking sweep. Yet there’s admirable variety of character to her tempo adjustments throughout the second part, such as holding back in the imitative episodes or stretching out those welcome moments of lyrical respite. The point is that Parakhina has valid individual ideas about a work that is still in the process of acquiring a strong and solid performing tradition. One also should mention Ate∞ Orga’s excellent booklet notes.