Two new recordings of Pictures at an Exhibition offer differing perspectives of Mussorgsky’s frequently traipsed gallery. Generally Bilin´ska favours fast tempi and likes to smooth out the composer’s blunt edges with tapered phrases and dynamic inflections, such as in the opening Promenade’s sudden dips from forte to piano. In ‘Gnomus’, her ever-so-slight hesitations before the reiterated Vivo main motifs somewhat pacify the latter’s stinging impact. ‘The Old Castle’, however, truly sings and flows, abetted by Bilin´ska’s strong staccato/legato differentiation. Her common tempo for the playful ‘Tuileries’ and grim ‘Bydło’ underlines Mussorgsky’s inspired juxtaposition of these two pieces.

Bilin´ska zips through the ‘Unhatched Chicks’ ballet in the wink of an eye, yet treads cautiously through the ‘Limoges’ marketplace’s hustle and bustle, and underplays the majesty and gravitas of ‘The Great Gate at Kiev’. By contrast, her spot-on tempi and instinct for implying orchestral colour make a cogent case for Prokofiev’s piano versions of 10 highlights from the ballet Romeo and Juliet. Note her hefty swagger in ‘Montagues and Capulets’ or the easily unfolding lyrical peaks and valleys of the final movement depicting Romeo bidding Juliet farewell, to mention just a few attractive examples.

Perhaps a wider sonic dynamic spectrum creates a more forceful impression throughout Stephen De Pledge’s Pictures, along with his starker, less nuanced way with Mussorgsky’s more declamatory writing in the Promenades and the final two movements. He shares Bilin´ska’s heavy-handed view of ‘Limoges’, yet his slower, more rhythmically centred ‘Chicks’ and ‘Tuileries’ yield more characterful results. On the other hand, he falls into a trap that snares many pianists in ‘The Old Castle’: his textures thicken and his tempo gets gradually slower as the music progresses.

De Pledge’s rapid repeated notes in ‘Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle’ are not so consistently executed as Bilin´ska’s, although neither pianist matches the insistent drive and character of Richter’s sonically dodgy yet interpretatively incomparable 1958 Sofia version. He reveals an unruffled, pretty surface in Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata, repeating the first-movement introduction à la Rudolf Serkin, yet misses the music’s linear tension and incisive grit. Similarly, De Pledge easily grasps and conveys the large-scale keyboard dimensions of Brahms’s Op 79 Rhapsodies but without Emanuel Ax’s steadier sweep and clearer articulation of bass-lines, let alone Wilhelm Kempff’s remarkable sense of polyphony.