Sarah Beth Briggs sandwiches Chopin between Debussy, an appropriate setting when you consider Debussy’s love of Chopin. Not only did he edit his music but he dedicated his late masterpiece, the 12 Etudes, to Chopin. Once more Briggs leaves you in no doubt concerning her integrity and affection. But if her technique is assured and her personality strong, she also has a tendency to stiffen into self-consciousness, to play as if in italics.

Debussy’s early evanescence in his Suite bergamasque needs a more natural fluidity and stylistic elegance, a greater lightness, if it is not to become weighed down with inflection. Her Chopin, too, is too much of the studio, too overworked, making you stop to remember Cortot’s prized spontaneity, his ‘careless rapture’ and his plea to his students (‘improvise, lose yourself!’). In the First Ballade the playing is not to be confused with high-flyers such as Argerich or Annie Fischer. The Fourth Scherzo in particular needs more fantasy and freedom if its mercurial poetry is to take flight.

Briggs is finely recorded and her notes remind us not only that Debussy’s Suite bergamasque is a tribute to Bergamo, that enchanting north Italian town, but that the second piece was originally titled ‘Promenade sentimentale’. Would it have achieved its universal popularity if it had not been changed to ‘Clair de lune’?