The Israeli pianist Matan Porat has been making a name for himself with his “narrative based” recitals on Mirare. This latest offering punctuates Schumann’s 21-part Carnaval with assorted miniatures by an eclectic array of 17 others, ranging from Couperin to Kurtág and Stravinsky to Stockhausen.

Album artwork

The result enlarges the playful whimsy and allusions of Schumann’s original, intricately spun out from four punning musical letters, with a series of telling interjections, commentaries and asides to create a beautifully woven, wonderfully entertaining patchwork quilt of pleasing colours and distracting textures. If Porat takes Schumann’s Carnaval too much at face value throughout, emphasising immediacy of expression over its more specific and gnomic associations, it’s a reading that doesn’t inhibit an appreciation of the free-flowing sense of invention that is everywhere in evidence...