Debussy once declared that Ravel possessed ‘the most refined ear that has ever existed’ and it is to Anna Vinnitskaya’s supreme credit that she complements such praise with performances of a rare imaginative delicacy and sympathy. What a natural and subtly inflected line she achieves in the Pavane, for her always ‘a pavane for a dead Infanta, not a dead pavane for an Infanta’ (Ravel). In Miroirs, Vinnitskaya’s moths (‘Noctuelles’) flit in and out of bright sunlight (a personal touch; the opening is marked pianissimo) before retreating into a shadowy, less frantically fluttering world. In ‘Oiseaux tristes’ you can almost sense the heat and lethargy of ‘birds lost in the torpor of a sombre tropical forest’, while in the miraculous marinescape of ‘Une barque sur l’océan’, Vinnitskaya achieves an unforgettable shimmering play of light and shade (though with a powerful undertow when required).

Her ‘Ondine’ from Gaspard is as scintillating and seductive as you could wish and her poise and focus in ‘Le gibet’ excel any other on record, wondrously alive to every harmonic and rhythmic twist in Ravel’s macabre vision. Her ‘Scarbo’, too, demonstrates how a truly transcendental technique is used to achieve exclusively the most evocative end. Beautifully recorded, this is Ravel-playing of a very special distinction.