Lucas Debargue is an artist who likes to go his own way, as witness his terrifically characterful Scarlatti sonatas (11/19), which I enjoyed as much as Patrick Rucker did. Here is something quite different: the complete Fauré solo piano music, a project that is still something of a rarity even today. Debargue writes in his refreshingly frank booklet essay that his has been a gradual enlightenment, having avoided Fauré in his youth (‘sleek, mechanical and occasionally opaque’); with the first cracks in his resistance coming when he overheard the First Barcarolle at a lesson in 2010. Only during lockdown did he find his breakthrough work – the Preludes, Op 103. Into this mix comes another vital element: a piano made by Stephen Paulello and named the Op 102 after the number of notes on its extended keyboard. For Debargue this was the right instrument – for its changeability of sound and its unusual clarity. These recordings were made in Paulello’s studio in 2021 and 2022.

That conviction Debargue mentions can certainly be heard in his account of those late Preludes, but this is a set laid out in chronological order, so there is much before them. The three Romances sans paroles bring us gently into Fauré’s world, here suitably unfussy, rubato applied judiciously in the Schumannesque second, while the third flows as easily as Jean-Philippe Collard’s classic account. The First Barcarolle – that revelation for the young Debargue – has an easy fluidity, Marc-André Hamelin steadier by some way, even if it doesn’t reach the quiet poetic heights of Germaine Thyssens-Valentin. Other highlights among the earlier music include the Fourth Nocturne, whose wide-eyed wonder is compellingly captured, contrasting with the build-up of its inner section, and the third Valse-caprice, whose sense of play is brought alive in a manner quite different from Thyssens-Valentin but no less potently. As we reach the Sixth Nocturne and Barcarolles Nos 5 and 6, we get into much-played territory. The Nocturne, though naturally flowing, doesn’t possess the poetry of its greatest interpreters – Thyssens-Valentin, Kathryn Stott and Collard among them – while the haunting tormented quality of the Fifth Barcarolle is more persuasive in Hamelin’s hands, but the ease of the Sixth is well conjured by Debargue.

With the Seventh Nocturne we’re thrust into a different world – one in which darkness and absolute seriousness of intent unfold on a larger canvas, with Debargue alive to its heaviness of heart. There’s another shift of mood for the Huit Pièces brèves, whose opening Capriccio has a pleasing insouciance to it, contrasting with the sombreness of the two fugues, an Allegresse that charms and a final Nocturne glinting with gossamer lines.

Debargue is a master when it comes to delineating new developments in Fauré’s sound world: the desiccated Nocturne No 9 is here starkly portrayed, significantly cooler than Hamelin. Thyssens-Valentin takes a faster tempo than either – all convince in their different ways. The links between this and the Tenth Nocturne, which picks up where the Ninth left off, are again made clear. I wondered if Debargue was trying too hard in the Ninth Barcarolle, where Stott evokes a hypnotic rocking motion with the simplest of means. However, the fifth of the Impromptus is particularly effective, with Debargue dispatching its whole-tone scales with a smiling virtuosity.

As we come to the very late music, there’s no doubting the conviction behind Debargue’s playing. The mourning quality of the Eleventh Nocturne, seemingly stilled by grief, is tellingly done, its radical harmonies and mournful bells uppermost. If he’s slightly less persuasive in the Tenth Barcarolle – here Hamelin is outstanding – the way he moulds the final bars is a thing of beauty. The final five pieces, three Barcarolles and two Nocturnes, make for draining listening – and I mean that as a compliment. Among the pervasive shadows, ire and spareness of means, almost more disturbing are the lighter elements (about as trustworthy as the hallucinatory major-key songs in Schubert’s Winterreise): how disconcerting, for instance, is the Eleventh Barcarolle, with its journey from pain to sunniness, or the Thirteenth Barcarolle. For Debargue the Twelfth Nocturne is where Fauré comes ‘closest to evoking the pain of the Great War’. And that quality is powerfully conveyed, especially in the terrifying crescendo-ing acceleration and its uneasily quiet sign-off. The final Nocturne also possesses great conviction: at a more flowing tempo than Hamelin or Thyssens-Valentin, there’s slightly less contrast with the shock of the G sharp minor outbreak, but its sense of wandering disquiet is palpable and he pulls a sense of hard-won consolation from its closing moments. Altogether, there is much to compel about this new set.