Janácek’s On an Overgrown Path has a complicated compositional history, its earliest forms (from 1900-02) comprising sets of seven or five illustrative pieces for piano or harmonium. As with so much of his output, his initial conceptions needed room to grow and by 1908 the work had doubled in size. The composer began but never completed a second book, also leaving an additional appendix of Paralipomena (“Supplements”), not published until half-a-century after his death.

Currently available recordings prefer the entire collection of 15 pieces to just the First Book – the more satisfying option – with which Hélène Couvert opens her warmly played survey. Despite their piecemeal assemblage, these 10 pieces form a truly unified cycle, inspired by autobiographical reminiscences to varying degrees linked, like Mussorgsky’s “Promenade”, by the “overgrown path” of Janácek’s memory. Couvert approaches them as a chain of evocations, almost impressionist in scope (although the piano style is anything but Debussian), her tempi beautifully judged. She is equally persuasive with In the Mists (1912), the true successor volume to On an Overgrown Path, a quartet of larger, deeper psychological landscapes from within the composer’s psyche.

Couvert’s refined touch produces some marvellously delicate playing, heard most affectingly in the Overgrown Path’s simple yet subtle final pair of movements. Yet the music needs steel in the fingers as well, as In the Mists and especially the Piano Sonata affirm. Her performance of the latter is more rounded, less angular than Ivo Kahánek’s recent Supraphon account (3/09) but as impressively achieved. Zig Zag’s piano sound is fine without being exceptional, the whole issue very enjoyable and well worth investigating.