‘Do we know how Chopin ought to be played or do we just think we do?’ asks the Ukrainian-born pianist in a detailed interview in this album’s booklet. This is in response to the interviewer’s observation that ‘one senses in your interpretation [of Chopin] a powerful urgency that is unusual. Did you want to give a different image of Chopin from the one usually attached to him?’ Lisitsa goes on to say that ‘one of the best pieces of advice I ever received as a young student was: “Don’t ever play Chopin as if he were about to die from tuberculosis.”’

I quote this at length because it is entirely germane to what you hear on this recording. Lisitsa further justifies her approach to the four Scherzos by stating her belief that rather than being ‘humorous’ (as the word ‘scherzo’ implies), rather they are ‘whirlwind moments with sharp outlines and lean textures … without a hint of overblown Romantic sentimentality’. Personally, I’m not a fan of all four played as a sequence but in this case I make an exception. Here they emerge as a quartet of utterly gripping, dramatically characterised tone poems with the varnish of preconceptions removed. Lisitsa employs fast tempos but never at the expense of textural clarity. Witness the thrusting upward runs at the beginning of the First Scherzo, so often gabbled, but here given a clear three beats in the bar. Not everything comes off – and I suspect there will be many who do not like their Chopin played with such relentless intensity (there are passages such as the opening pages of the Fourth Scherzo that are urged onwards to the point of impatience). But to hear these works played in long paragraphs and with such passion is as refreshing to my ears at it is exhilarating.

The Polonaise-fantaisie, which can so easily fall apart and become too sectionalised, is given the same treatment. Here, the ecstatic effect of its peroration is reduced somewhat by Lisitsa’s determination to push the narrative forwards too hard but it’s still a compelling reading. As, too, is the Andante spianato (no hint of tuberculosis here!) and Grande Polonaise brillante, in which her agile right-hand passagework is firmly and buoyantly underpinned by the left. The Fantaisie-impromptu takes the role of an encore to conclude this impressive and stimulating recording.