Around a decade ago, Chinese classical guitarist Xuefei Yang released a compilation album: ‘Sojourn: The Very Best of Xuefei Yang’. For those unfamiliar with her art, it’s a terrific introduction, drawing on a wealth of previously released material from across her wide repertoire. I mention this only so we’re clear: ‘Guitar Favourites’ is a very different proposition.

Yes, there are few surprises here. Yes, it’s a good old-fashioned recital, devoid of tricky concepts. Yes, Yang has recorded all of these works before, sometimes on multiple occasions. But this is precisely the point: ‘I feel it’s time to return to the quintessential guitar music that moved me at first listen – music that revealed ever more facets over the years.’ The result is just as revelatory of Yang’s growth as an artist as, say, that of a pianist’s fourth recording of the Beethoven piano sonatas.

Most striking, perhaps, is Yang’s approach to tempo, both on the macro and the micro level. Take, for example, the extraordinarily flexible tremolo in Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra: I can’t recall any other guitarist so willing to break up the flow of this quintessential guitar technique with such broad rallentandos and accelerandos. It’s very deliberate – you don’t hear the same treatment on Yang’s own Xinjiang Fantasy. And very beautiful.

Barrios’s La catedral is another highlight, with an exquisitely spacious ‘Saudade’ and an Allegro solemne of fleet majesty. Here, as throughout, Yang brings to her trademark lightness and sweetness of tone and impeccable technique a greater expressive freedom than ever before.