It’s interesting how certain pianists known for advocating thorny large-scale 20th-century works also champion the exquisitely wrought tonality of Mompou’s keyboard miniatures. Herbert Henck’s disc devoted to Música callada (ECM 9/95) was a case in point, and so is the present recital by Steffen Schleiermacher.

He projects the opening work, Charmes, in bold yet noticeably shaded hues that belie the composer’s self-deprecating description of these six pieces as ‘impoverished music’. The Trois Variations begin with a theme hammered out by one finger and end with a gorgeous Nocturne that gradually breaks apart and fades away. Unlike Javier Perianes’s gently translucent recording (Harmonia Mundi, 3/07), Schleiermacher’s is memorably dark and brooding.

The pianist’s strengths as a colourist and mood painter particularly come home to roost in Cants mágics (Mompou’s first published cycle of piano pieces), where he adopts slower tempi than those in the composer’s own recording; in fact, ‘Misteriós’ is much slower under Schleiermacher’s fingers, and so is ‘L’ermita’ from Pessebres. But whereas Mompou is emphatic and hard-hitting in the latter’s extrovert ‘Dansa’, Schleiermacher’s more animated and lilting account falls easier on the ear.

By contrast, the denser harmonic waters of the Fêtes lointaines cycle find Schleiermacher and Mompou in closer interpretative accord. Schleiermacher fares best in Suburbis’s lyrical, introspective movements such as ‘La cegueta’, yet he negotiates the sparkling passage work in ‘Gitanes II’ and ‘El Carrer’ with relatively heavy hands in comparison to Martin Jones’s softer-grained virtuosity (Nimbus, 9/04), not to mention Rosa Sabater’s matchless vivacity and authority (nla).

MDG’s resonant ambience befits this repertoire, as does the oaken timbre of the label’s trusty ‘house’ 1901 Steinway grand. One also should mention Schleiermacher’s clear, informative and succinct booklet essay.