This was my introduction to Viviana Lasaracina, another outstanding talent from the studio of Benedetto Lupo. Quite frankly, at first I almost couldn’t believe my ears. Was this truly so exquisitely poised a balance of instinct and intellect, a probing search for the music’s essence, an ear for detail so keen that it reveals rather than obscures the greater structure, all swathed in pianistic mastery of rare finesse? A glance at the reviews of her New York debut, already seven years ago, reassured me that others have also recognised in Lasaracina a singular voice.

Let me dispense with the Allegro de concierto, given a full, rich performance that masks its occasional structural weakness, and move directly to the heart of the matter: Granados’s masterpiece, Goyescas (Los majos enamorados). Lasaracina plays as an oracle might speak, with rhetoric that may rise to grandeur but avoids stridence. Her message is urgent but unhurried. The leisurely unfolding of her exquisitely shaped phrases is held effortlessly aloft. Each note, colour, phrase is different from the next and it is this slowly rotating kaleidoscope that rivets our attention.

‘Coloquio en la reja’, shadowed and sultry with piquant harmonies deftly pointed, exudes smouldering passion. The Fandango is nothing short of intoxicating, evoking the proud, straight spines of flamenco, despite its beautifully pliant phrasing. ‘Quejas, o La maja y el ruiseñor’ is occasion for some of the most luxuriously sensual piano-playing I’ve heard. The unfathomable depth of Lasaracina’s piano sound informs ‘El amor y la muerte’, in a performance that doesn’t suggest but portrays terror. ‘Epilogo: Serenata del espectro’ emerges as the uneasy commentary on all that has transpired, and with ‘El pelele’ we are returned to the teeming life of the street.

When all is said and done, listening to this Goyescas feels less like viewing the tapestry cartoons of Goya than actually entering the mind of the artist himself and dwelling with the imagination that created Los caprichos and Los desastres de la guerra. This remarkable release shouldn’t be missed. So compellingly individual are Lasaracina’s sumptuous performances, you may find yourself, as I did, not thinking of Alicia de Larrocha even once.