Any new release from the Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski is cause for celebration, and this new disc of Bartók, Janáček, and Szymanowski is no different. Here, he combines pieces from Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path, Szymanowski’s 20 Mazurkas Op. 50, and Bartók’s 14 Bagatelles Op. 6. 

The connective tissue is that each of these pieces works with folk music (of Moravia, Poland, and Hungary, respectively), although these are sometimes simply inspired-by rather than direct quotations. This music is sometimes angular and intellectual, sometimes playful and unassuming, and sometimes all of those things within a few bars, so it certainly takes a pianist of Anderszewski’s skill to meld those elements into one cohesive whole.

Of this release he says that “The works on this album are imbued with a sense of rebellion … there is no place here for stylisation or decorum. These works plumb the very roots of music”. A previous release of Anderszewski’s had him describe the music of Mozart and Schumann has having “an unobstructed directness to...