Maria Razumovskaya is a London-based pianist who thinks deeply about the music she performs. As well as pursuing a performing career, she has a PhD in the life and work of Heinrich Neuhaus. Her veneration of such Russian giants influences her performance style and programming.

This disc gives us two Bach transcriptions by Busoni: Chaconne in D Minor and Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ; Busoni’s own Fantasia in the style of Bach; Liszt’s Vallée d’Obermann and Funérailles; an Elegy by Rachmaninov, and a Fantasia by CPE Bach. They are all predominantly slow, minor-key pieces, either monumental or melancholy and often both. Razumovskaya’s polished technique is big enough to encompass the bell-suffused climax of Vallée d’Obermann, but she tends to approach every piece in the same ultra-Romantic way. CPE calls for spontaneity and unpredictability, qualities her carefully considered reading negates.

Her most satisfying interpretation is of Busoni’s arrangement of the Chaconne from Bach’s Violin Partita No 2. Busoni completely reconceived it in pianistic terms, and the result is as solid as a set of variations by Brahms. Razumovskaya has the work’s measure and it encourages greater light and shade in her playing, but as a whole this recital is...