After shenanigans involving several supreme if problematic pianists (problematic in the sense that they chose to record only occasionally), DG has taken on a stable of largely Eastern artists altogether more eager to set their performances down for posterity. And make no mistake, 22-year-old Yuja Wang is a wondrously gifted pianist whose debut album of sonatas by Chopin, Liszt and Scriabin, with the stimulating addition of two Ligeti Etudes, suggests a combination of blazing technique and a rare instinct for poetry. Curtis-trained under Gary Graffman, Wang has spoken of her special love for music of drama and turbulence and how, ever since first hearing Pollini’s recording of the Chopin Etudes, she dreamt of recording for the Yellow Label.

In Scriabin’s Second Sonata she is beautifully sensitive to the moods, whether tranquil and starlit or tempestuous, reflecting the composer’s love of the Baltic Sea. She is fiery but never reckless in Chopin’s Second Sonata, off like the proverbial greyhound at the first doppio movimento, and offers a dramatic bass emphasis at the climax of the heaven-storming development. Her finale is truly sotto voce yet with the widest variety of touch and expression, and for the most part her playing, while sharply individual, is free from all distorting idiosyncrasy or mannerism.

You won’t hear anything on the scale of Richter or Gilels in the Liszt Sonata (see Brilliant’s recently released Liszt set – 6/09) but on the other hand Wang is young, wonderfully talented and trained, superbly recorded and, if this disc is anything to go by, she has the world at her feet. As a crowning touch her Ligeti Etudes are both musicianly and dazzlingly incisive. In the words of the publicist, “a star is born”.