The young Bonn native Fabian Müller has captured laurels at competitions in Frankfurt, Bolzano and Munich. His debut recording, which included music of Ravel, Bartók, Messiaen and Beethoven, was released in 2016 (ARS Produktion). His second disc, devoted entirely to Brahms, is both satisfying and artistically distinctive, suggesting that Müller is a pianist worth keeping an eye on.

He begins with the Op 10 Ballades, as difficult to pull off as the opener of a CD as they are of a recital. But from the beginning, a richly atmospheric sound, beautiful chord-voicing and a genuine sense of an ominous tale unfolding alerts us to something special at work here. As the pieces progress, it becomes evident that, by scrupulous observance of Brahms’s dynamic, articulation and pedal markings, Müller is able to achieve shapely formal contours, avoiding the fragmentation to which these pieces often fall prey. He is also able to tease out astonishingly varied textures from the composer’s slavishly chord-bound figurations.

These qualities blossom and pollinate the more succinct and contrasted Eight Pieces, Op 76, creating in each a miniature lyrical or dramatic gestalt. The ubiquitous B minor Capriccio, perhaps the first small Brahms piece to enter the repertory and played by everybody, sounds less whimsically mincing than slightly sinister, thanks to Müller’s deft applications of subtle rubato to an inerrant sense of momentum. The subsequent A flat Intermezzo floats a luxuriant legato above what could be a delicate string pizzicato accompaniment. In an interesting take on the B flat Intermezzo, the shuddering thirds that close the first section are transformed into shivers of delight by the end. The jaunty C sharp minor Capriccio, with all its cross-rhythmic stresses, makes its bumptious way with a refreshingly light step. This is the sort of boldly original, heartfelt Brahms-playing that leaves one hungry for more.

The Danish pianist Rikke Sandberg, despite her interesting and varied Brahms programme for Danacord, falls somewhat short of the high benchmark set by Müller. Her fearlessly uncompromising Bach D minor Chaconne surely fulfils Brahms’s intention in arranging the piece for left hand alone to convey some sense of its challenges for the solo violin. Her abstemious use of the pedal heightens the similarity to Bach’s original. She is less successful in the challenging Variations on a Hungarian Song, which seem directionless, and a lavishly applied rubato impairs the two Hungarian Dances.

Sandberg too gives us the full Op 76 but from an entirely different point of view. Here rhythmical ambivalence again asserts itself, with a tendency to dwell on the first beat of the bar and on the beginning of phrases, rendering many of the pieces static and obscuring contours.