Mood and atmosphere is all in Seong-Jin Cho’s double-disc survey of Ravel’s Complete Solo Piano Works for Deutsche Grammophon. The young South Korean pianist, victor of the 2015 international Chopin Piano Competition and the Berlin Philharmonic’s current Artist-in-Residence, is a bold choice to spearhead the venerable Yellow Label’s Ravel 150 celebrations. Following hard on the heels of this release will be the two piano concertos, recorded live by Cho with the Boston Symphony and Andris Nelsons.

Soon to turn 31, there is no doubting the dexterity and precision of Cho’s technique, and much to admire in the ringing, crystalline quality of his tone here on a C. Bechstein grand piano in the accommodating if occasionally a touch too immediate acoustic of Berlin’s Siemens-Villa. 

But where Cho can spin playful, pirouetting figures and blossoming swathes of enveloping sound out of gossamer-thin threads in Jeux d’eau, and ink in vivid impressions of colour and bursts of electric energy in the superbly dispatched Miroirs and, albeit uneven, Valses nobles et sentimentales, elsewhere is the unsettling feeling of subterranean...