Sofya Gulyak builds her new Champs Hill release around a series of chaconnes, dating from the early 18th century through the 1960s. The highlight of the disc may be Busoni’s fierce Toccata: Preludio-Fantasia-Ciaccona from 1921, which Gulyak attacks with something like abandon. Carl Nielsen’s Chaconne is a close second, its intriguing harmonies and figuration imbued with a sort of nervous freshness. The virtuoso performance given Sofia Gubaidulina’s early Chaconne (1962) achieves a terrifying intensity though, like most of the pieces on the disc, it suffers from what seems to be overly close microphone placement.

Gulyak also makes a strong case for the rarely heard Sarabande and Chaconne from Handel’s Almira, Liszt’s gift to his British disciple Walter Bache. Drawing on plenty of variety in both dynamics and articulation, Gulyak foregrounds the inherent tension of Liszt’s juxtaposition of the two dances. Her straightforward interpretation stands in vivid contrast with Alessio Bax’s more subtle and sensitive reading (Warner, 11/04).

The first two items on the programme are in many ways the least successful. Famously, the gateway to Busoni’s remarkable piano transcriptions of Bach was the organ works, and it is usually with that sound ideal in mind, if not with that of the original Solo Violin Partita, that pianists approach the D minor Chaconne. Favouring neither, Gulyak employs a rather aggressive, detached touch for the opening, later contrasting it with legato pianissimos. Her preoccupation with pianistic sonorities unfortunately leaves the music itself a bit marginalised. Listening to the Handel Chaconne, Grigory Sokolov’s Couperin comes to mind, though Gulyak’s Handel is less virtuoso. The overall impression is of a mannered digital tour de force at Handel’s expense.