A personal note: I first learnt about the New York-based French pianist Matthieu Cognet through our mutual pianist friend Fanny Azzuro, who simply raved about her colleague’s gifts. I next heard a CD drawn from his 2011 Paris debut, which included a stunning performance of the Theme and Variations movement from Dutilleux’s Piano Sonata, and equally strong readings of works by Schumann, Rachmaninov and Scarlatti.

His newest solo CD, if anything, proves more distinctive. Even in a catalogue overloaded with excellent recordings of Schumann’s Humoreske, Cognet’s integrity, idiomatic perception and refined mastery draw you into the composer’s volatile sound world. In the opening section, Cognet conveys an appropriately muted mood by keeping the long melody, the inner-voice accompaniment and the bass lines in judicious perspective, as he also does later on in the combative Sehr lebhaft section. Cognet doesn’t launch into the Sehr rasch und leicht with, say, Kirill Gerstein’s rollicking abandon, yet his carefully scaled dynamics make dramatic impact where it counts. He’s less febrile than Emanuel Ax in the Hastig section and takes special care to bring out the stepwise bass lines many pianists flatten out.

In Prokofiev’s ‘Suggestion diabolique’, Cognet brings out the music behind the muscle, and it’s good to hear this warhorse in its original context alongside Op 4’s three other equally evocative pieces. Cognet generates witty point and sparkle at the start of the first movement in Haydn’s C major Sonata, yet doesn’t sustain his liveliness of mind as the music unfolds. But his telling distinctions between legato and detached articulation in the slow movement and his clever timing of the finale’s unexpected silences compensate. As for Bartók’s 1926 Sonata, Cognet orchestrates the music rather than banging it out. Rhythmic drive takes a back seat to giving the outer movements their lyrical due, and the imitative writing takes revealing conversational wing. The intimate yet full-bodied sound does Cognet’s beautiful tone justice. Keep your eye on this superb pianist and intelligent musician – I know I will!