The powerful, impassioned pianism displayed in the Armenian-American pianist Kariné Poghosyan’s all-Khachaturian solo debut CD (Grand Piano, 2015) remains evident throughout this ambitious follow-up release. She confidently launches into Petrushka’s ‘Danse russe’, where the bouncy conversational left-hand details catch your ear to the point where you can take Poghosyan’s poised right-hand octaves for granted. Some may find her rhetorical breadth in ‘Chez Petrouchka’ a tad emotive, more appropriate to Tchaikovsky than to Stravinsky, yet the characterisation befits the storyline and the music’s harmonic tenderness.

The Shrovetide Fair, however, stands out for Poghosyan’s masterly textural layering and resounding climaxes, where she strikes a judicious balance between control and abandon. Poghosyan’s dry-point articulation in The Firebird’s ‘Danse infernale’ holds its own in comparison with Beatrice Rana’s slightly faster rendition (Warner, 11/19), although Jenny Lin’s recording (Steinway & Sons, 7/14) is more convincingly inflected. But the rolling arpeggios in the Finale’s peroration maintain a steady course, with the resounding melody in full focus.

Even in its compressed 1931 revision, Rachmaninov’s Second Sonata remains a diffuse composition, which is why terse and headlong interpretations seem to work best (think Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Alexis Weissenberg) for the first movement. As such, Poghosyan’s freewheeling subjectivity will strike listeners as either refreshingly individual or blatantly over-the-top. Her finale makes light of the thick textures, although her recent live Carnegie Hall performance inspired more ferocity in the cascading runs, not to mention an immense sonority that even this splendidly engineered recording cannot fully suggest.

Poghosyan’s poetic impulses and penchant for alluring voicings find a suitable and congenial context in the Moments musicaux. She exerts no effort over the swirling Nos 2 and 4, yet I’m more riveted by her eloquent reserve in No 3, where the silences prove just as telling as the notes themselves.