Album: Khatia Buniatishvili Chopin (Sony Classical)

Today's concert pianist comes with a bit of added character. Young Georgian prodigy Khatia Buniatishvili has gone for the classic tortured-poet approach, viewing the piano as "a symbol of musical solitude".

Her sleevenote to this Chopin selection likens his music to "a breath cut short before its time", and certainly, her delivery of the familiar "Waltz In C-sharp minor" sounds as if she has to finish it before it bursts out of her, darting through sequences with amazing speed and lightness. And while it may be contrary to her characterisation of Chopin's youthful spirit, her reading of the "Funeral March" section of the Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor possesses a solemnity which, one imagines, strikes the loudest chord with her own spirit. 

Download: Waltz in C-sharp minor; Marche funèbre; Mazurka in A minor