This is a kind of “concept album”. The young French pianist (a protégée of Leon Fleisher) sees variations as the “quintessence of music”, a permanent feature of its history, and offers five sets spanning three centuries, though not in chronological order. First come Haydn’s sublime Variations in F minor, played with a beautiful, tragic calm. Rachmaninov’s Corelli Variations lurch us forward 138 years, but the basic similarity in form proves Wagner’s point. The post-Schoenbergian idiom of Berio’s Cinque variazioni is more graspable in this formal context. Rameau’s Gavotte variée is a starting point, and Brahms’s variations on a theme from Schumann’s Bunte Blätter make an absorbing finale.

Naïve AM134

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