After his utterly exceptional disc of Chopin, recorded live during the course of the 2021 International Chopin Competition (12/21), Canadian Bruce Liu makes his debut studio recording. It is an agreeably unhackneyed programme of three great French composers entitled ‘Waves’, for a reason I have not yet worked out.

He opens with Rameau’s delightful ‘Gavotte et Dix Doubles’ (ie variations) from his Nouvelles suites de Pièces de clavecin of 1728, a work given distinguished recordings by Robert Casadesus in 1952 and Shura Cherkassky live in 1974, both of whom were more interested in it as a piano work than the newcomer, who prefers to remind us of its origins. While the sequence of ornaments and trills begins to sound fussy and applied externally rather than emerging organically, Liu is a masterly colourist who manages to bring a touching emotional engagement to music that can often hold you at arm’s length.

He finds a whole different palette for Miroirs (which again is, in itself, very different to his Chopin). ‘Une barque sur l’océan’, exceptionally well articulated, presents a rougher and more turbulent sea voyage than Steven Osborne (Hyperion, 4/11). ‘Alborada del gracioso’ is Ravel with the wow factor – sensational repeated notes and rhythmically alert – but for me the highlight of the suite is ‘La vallée des cloches’, surely one of the most forebodingly atmospheric accounts on disc.

Rameau and Ravel are well represented on DG, but as far as I know Bruce Liu is the first pianist in the history of the yellow label to programme a work by Alkan on an album. (‘La chanson de la folle au bord de la mer’ has appeared on a download-only from Simon Ghraichy, and Olivier Latry offered a Prière on the organ.) If the Barcarolle from Recueil de chants is your introduction to Alkan as played here, then you are lucky indeed. It’s a bewitching performance.

It’s unlikely that we’ll see Alkan’s Études in all the major and minor keys on DG any time soon (too niche?) so for now we must content ourselves with the final study of Op 39 – No 12, ‘Le festin d’Ésope’, one of Alkan’s most popular works, a madcap set of 25 variations on a mundane theme and not to be taken too seriously – though any pianist must take its terrifying technical demands extremely seriously. Liu handles everything with great assurance and aplomb (I note he adds a couple of little flourishes to round off two of the variations) but misses its humour, and cannot quite match (who could?) Marc-André Hamelin’s hair-raising dispatch of Vars 17 and 18 (Hyperion, 12/95).

Liu closes with four further pieces by Rameau. Here, I’m afraid, I rather lost patience with him – the pulse pulled hither and thither, and fussy ornaments that seem to be more important than the subject matter. Compare, for instance, his ‘Les Cyclopes’ from Pièces de clavecin (or ‘clavessin’ as the cover track inexplicably has it) with that of his label-mate Víkingur Ólafsson (4/20) and you might be listening to two different works. So a warm welcome but with minor reservations.