For the second volume in her Chopin series, the young French pianist Hélène Tysman focuses on the Ballades, interweaving them with an array of other masterpieces. Coincidentally, she plays the Op 9 No 3 Nocturne that features on Louis Lortie’s recital (reviewed above). She is tauter than Lortie but there’s a relatively restricted colour palette, and in the coruscating minor-key section neither is as fevered as Pires.

Tysman is clearly in love with Chopin’s music and she produces some lovely sounds (well recorded), particularly in the quieter pages. But at times she seems so intent on revealing the beauty of every phrase that she loses sight of the structure – a particular issue in the Polonaise-Fantaisie. Sometimes she seems to underplay some of Chopin’s more outlandish experiments. In the fourth of the Op 24 Mazurkas, for instance, rather than thriving on the tension created by its chromaticism, she seems determined to bring this acerbic little number into line with its siblings; while elsewhere in the set (notably Nos 1 and 3) she has a tendency to overdo the rubato. Turn to Janis or – even more strikingly – early Rubinstein and you have a much greater impression of the grittiness of these dances.

On the whole, the Third Ballade comes off better than the others. The tumult of the Second, following an aptly hushed introduction, is distinctly lacking in angst when you compare her with Zimerman or Perahia; and the First, while possessing a nicely haloed tone in the quieter moments, lacks the colour and the imaginative sense of narrative that you find in the finest readings.