Never for a moment would you doubt Rosa Torres-Pardo’s commitment to Albéniz’s daunting masterpiece. And there are many poetically arresting moments (notably in the magical close of “El Corpus en Sevilla”) in her performance, given before an audience including Alicia de Larrocha in Cambot-Les Bains, the French Basque village where the composer spent his last months. But even here her rubato nags consistently at the music’s natural line and pulse, and her tendency to linger gratefully on the first beat of the bar erases much sense of impetus or vivacity. More generally, her rhythmic distortions sound dictated by so many exorbitant demands affecting the listener like desperate pauses for breath. Torres-Pardo may be in love with Iberia, with an inifinitely rich and lavish portrait of Spain, but Iberia does not necessarily return the compliment. Always she lets you hear how hard the music is, whereas Alicia de Larrocha (on her recently reissued EMI discs) and Marc André-Hamelin (to offer cruel comparisons) miraculously subsume every difficulty into the music’s infinitely varied texture and richness. There, Albéniz’s loving prolixity can seem all too short. From Torres-Pardo every item seems endlessly extended.

Her entry and exit are greeted with applause and she has been well recorded. But Glossa’s presentation is amateur and a final repetition of four works from Iberia (presumably a précis created by the pianist) could have been more usefully replaced by other works, most notably by Navarra, Albéniz’s stunning pendant to Iberia.