Alexandre Tansman (1897-1986) was born in Poland but spent most of his musical life in Paris, always referred to himself as ‘un compositeur polonais’ despite becoming a French citizen in 1938. His Transatlantic Sonatina was the result of a 1927 trip to the US, where he discovered jazz. The opening Foxtrot mixes up Joplin and Gershwin, before an exquisite ‘Spiritual and Blues’ and finally a swinging Charleston.

Tansman was a marvellous tune-smith with a Polish heritage but a French accent gained from his move to Paris in 1919. There he absorbed elements of cabaret, music-hall, café, jazz and fashionable dances, blurring boundaries between artistic and popular music.

The Trois Préludes en forme de blues pick up the stylistic theme hinted at in the middle movement of the sonata. Le Tour du monde en miniature (1933) affirms Tansman’s status as among the most cosmopolitan composers of the 20th century: a whirlwind 12-movement suite that sets out among the coconut groves of California and ends up dancing a tarantella in Naples, having stopped off in far-eastern jungles and temples along the way.

Maria Argentiero ends her uniquely compiled survey of Tansman’s piano music with a world-premiere recording of the Esquisses javanaises (1945) – a set of three tone-pictures for the piano which returns to the central panels of the Tour de monde and their potent evocations of eastern culture from a western perspective.

Born in 1985, the Italian pianist Maria Argentiero gained an enthusiastic online following during lockdown with her streamed performances of repertoire from Haydn to Satie, Kapustin and beyond. She teaches in Rome and specialises as a performer in quirkier voices from the past century such as Tansman. The booklet features a thorough profile of the composer and his piano music, plus an interview between Maria Argentiero and Marianne Tansman, the composer’s daughter, who recalls him as a ‘very loving but very anxious’ father.