The liner notes of this CD make some useful points about the music featured here: that there is a considerable amount of Latin American piano music written in a traditional, late-19th-century European style that is often overlooked in English-speaking countries.

When some of the pieces selected for this recording – mainly Mexican and Cuban piano works – were originally performed in Latin America, they were often played alongside the premiere of works written by European composers.

Mexico and Cuba were European colonies until the 19th century; and, most of these composers travelled to Europe to study composition, as touring performers or, in some instances, to escape armed conflicts in their home countries. The most interesting aspect of these works is not the way in which they resemble European music, but how they uniquely alter European models to attain a Latin American idiom. 

One of the features these compositions share is that they began at the keyboard. That said, charming as most of them are, only a few rise above the level of sepia-tinted, fin-de-siècle salon music, something the soloist here readily admits. Character...