My first exposure to the playing of the Croatian pianist Goran Filipec was on a stunning disc of Paganini studies transcribed by Liszt which I welcomed in June 2016 (Naxos). Just last March my colleague Jed Distler was raving about Filipec’s first volume dedicated to the music of Blagoje Bersa (1873-1934) – no, I hadn’t either – on the Grand Piano label, one with a growing reputation for championing undiscovered piano repertoire. Admirably, as with the two earlier discs, Filipec acts as his own producer, and once more opts for a Shigeru Kawai EX grand. I cannot honestly say I enjoyed its voicing but, especially in fortissimo and above, Filipec’s tone production is unpleasantly clangourous.

There is no denying this gifted artist’s technical command. His incisive attack in, for instance, Var 8 of Mark Hambourg’s Variations, its chordal figurations played at allegro vivace with real heft. The cruel left-hand passagework in Var 6 of Ignaz Friedman’s Studies on the same 24th Caprice of Paganini are fluently executed. In Var 15 he shows that he has a pleasantly quiet touch when he wants to, but all too often we get the hectoring martellato that Friedman requests only in the blaze of octaves that round off the piece.

Such reservations notwithstanding, Filipec is an exciting prospect and his programme is most valuable. What a pleasant change from the Brahms Variations are the Hambourg and Friedman Variations on the ubiquitous A minor Caprice. The Hambourg is a first recording, as are Michael Zadora’s takes on two Caprices (thrilling), and the Three Capriccios after Paganini (1981) by the Croatian composer Boris Papandopulo (1906 91), not a dissonant bang-fest as you might expect from those dates but brief, virtuoso neoclassical end-of-recital pieces which are bound to be taken up by others. If you already have the Friedman Studies recorded by Valerie Tryon (APR) or Peter Froundjian (Etcetera), it’s worth the repertoire duplication to hear this and the other pieces played by Filipec.