The piano disc is presented by four pianists. Tamilla Guliyeva plays Uzeyir Hajibeyov's gentle pastel sketch Sansiz (Without You) the equivalent of the flowery stems of Billy Mayerl. Adigozalzade's reading of Vasif Adigozal's 1992 Elegy is in much the same charming and unassuming vein. Similarly for the two pieces by Rafig Babayev who was killed in a bomb outrage on the Baku Metro. Ulviyya Valiyeva puts Three Sketches in the Spirit of Vatto by Ismayil Hajibeyov through its impeccably Bachian paces - fast and slow.

Murad Adigozalzade (a mainstay of this set) gives us Gara Garayev's three preludes from 1950. These are gently emphatic romantic pieces in the straightforward Western style we might associate with the writing of the British pastoralists of the 1920s. That is until we get to the third prelude. This is a surprisingly original piece: part Bach, cakewalk and jazz strut. Garayev certainly had something about him. The same pianist continues with eight brief solos by Amirov. After the Hajibeyovs and Garayev, where folk material is either absent or deeply subsumed into Western styles, these Amirov pieces are clearly indebted to folk voices from the plains and mountains and countryside. All the usual and enchanting paraphernalia of sinuous sway, dance and rite are implicit in the music. It is no wonder that Stokowski took to this music like a duck to water. The Toccata echoes with the sounds of the Tar.

The pianist Elnara Hashimova is our guide through Vasif Adigozal's Six Preludes of 1992. In these works the 'blue note' pastoralism of Mayerl and even of John Ireland is ruffled with tart rhythmic material bearing the stamp of Shostakovich. In the case of the Fourth Prelude, early Rachmaninov is suggested or the iron-shod martellato style we know from his own Fourth Piano Concerto and Bartók's Allegro Barbaro. Some of this also made me wonder whether Kapustin's piano concertos and solos had been heard in Baku. Hashimova rounds out the disc with three of Garayev's winsome 1950 preludes. They are allotted a single track; it would have helped if they had been listed by key or number or title. This is a drawback of other parts of the set e.g. in the Chamber volume.

Rob Barnett