Challenge Records tells us nothing about Igor Roma though the internet is more informative; apparently he won first prize in the 1996 Liszt Competition in Utrecht and a variety of awards elsewhere. Alas, such a prize does not necessarily guarantee quality and Roma’s way with Liszt’s Venezia e Napoli (a garland of encores after the Années de pèlerinage, Book 2 – Italy) is brutally unsubtle and undifferentiated. Granted, few pianists can have hacked their way through so many notes with greater aplomb (repeated notes in the Tarantella are like bursts of machine-gun fire) though such steel-tipped virtuosity brings sadly limited musical returns.

Alkan’s Le festin d’Esope also offers prodigies of virtuosity (try Variation 18 for a scarcely credible storm of brilliance, even though it is marked piano e leggieremente) but instead of evoking “all manner of creeping crawling things, aquatic personages, winged ones and growling yapping beasties” (Raymond Lewenthal), this remains a self-defeating display. Much of Romeo and Juliet suffers the same fate with too little balletic grace in “Folkdance” and a tempo for “The Young Juliet” that nearly rockets her into the stratosphere. True, when the music is serene or contemplative (“Romeo bids Juliet farewell”) Roma relaxes into a more musical and characterful frame of mind. But overall these performances are high on bravura and short on lyricism. The recording is as bright and frosty as the playing.