Yoav Levanon is an 18-year-old Israeli-French pianist. This is his debut album for Warner Classics, a programme with the flimsy premise that all the music is by four of the composers who contributed to the statue of Beethoven unveiled in 1845 in Bonn (though, as the first-rate accompanying essay on the Beethoven Festival by William Meredith confirms, that the project came to fruition at all was due almost entirely to Liszt).

The first thing you notice – if you buy the CD – is the striking cover photograph of Levanon. The booklet itself can’t make up its mind if it’s a fashion shoot or a pitch for a shampoo commercial. There is nothing whatsoever about the pianist himself or the music he plays. And the first thing you notice about Levanon as a pianist is how theatrical his playing is. There is no doubting his bravura technique – superb octaves and agility, power in reserve – but his concept of the Sonata, at present, is hit-and-miss. That’s to say there are many sections, such as the voicing and pacing of the fugue, and the furious presto/prestissimo octaves at the end, that are admirably done. The opening pages, on the other hand, are a blur, lacking focus or shape and with a grading of dynamics that leaves him nowhere to build, remaining at the same continuous level of onslaught. As for the sublime F sharp major heart of the work, it is marked andante sostenuto, not adagio sostenuto (I wonder if Levanon has ever tried singing this passage to himself?). In a few years’ time, he may give us a great Liszt Sonata. At present, he has yet to discover all that this iconic score has to offer.

Chopin’s sombre Op 45 Prelude is beautifully conceived and phrased, even if he seems to have something against playing arpeggiated chords. Likewise the Mendelssohn Variations, played with a commendable variety of touch and colour (try Var 13), even if many sf markings are ignored and there is scant differentiation between p and pp. The Schumann Fantasie, like the Liszt Sonata, is a young man’s view of the work, technically remarkable (those perilous leaps in the closing pages of the second movement are dispatched with breathtaking élan and accuracy), the drama of the outer movements over-egged, the emotion applied from without for dramatic effect rather than felt from within.

The album ends with ‘La campanella’, an account that rivals any on disc for speed and dexterity. There is a promotional video online of Levanon recording this, which must be one of the most irritating exercises of its kind. Film of him playing an astonishing jazz encore at the 2019 Verbier Festival says far more, confirming that here we have a significant talent with a big career in front of him – as long as he is not marketed as a latter-day Liberace. He is much better than that.