The Armenian pianist Lilit Grigoryan’s 2012 solo release containing sonatas by Scarlatti, Schumann and Bartók essentially revealed a highly capable yet rather inhibited artist at work. This impression spills over into her all-variations programme’s opening selections. The pianist’s textually scrupulous and cleanly executed Bach/Busoni Chaconne flattens out the music’s enormous peaks and valleys, only exuding tension and poetry in the final pages. Nothing goes wrong in Beethoven’s C minor Variations, yet where is the aching expression underneath No 9’s sextuplet trills, the ferocity in No 18’s upward scales or the intensity of the double notes in Nos 26 and 27? In the Ivan Moravec (Supraphon) and Mitsuko Uchida (Philips) recordings, but not here.

Grigoryan plays the faster sections of Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses with appreciable brilliance and élan, but don’t expect Murray Perahia’s astute voice-leading (Sony) nor Alicia de Larrocha’s pinpoint differentiation of textures (Decca). However, Grigoryan includes four rejected variations as an appendix. Once you hear them, you understand why Mendelssohn scrapped them! While pianists generally haven’t shown interest in Bizet’s Variations chromatiques since Glenn Gould made the first recording back in 1971 (Sony), Grigoryan positively revels in the work’s fanciful harmonic detours and theatrical touches. Indeed, her tremolos in Var 5 conjure Bizet’s mysterious intentions more effectively than Gould’s.

Finally, her sonority and expressive potential noticeably open up for Szymanowski’s Op 3 Variations, and if Martin Jones (Nimbus) wields a lighter hand in the agitato Vars 2 and 7 and the mazurka of Var 3, Grigoryan’s more subjective inflections prove equally plausible, not to mention her singing line in Var 10’s Andantino dolce. Recommended mostly for the Bizet and Szymanowski.