Pierre-Laurent Aimard's much-publicised recent claim in an interview with a German newspaper that Debussy is a greater composer than Wagner is by no means original – it was also made in an influential study of 20th-century music first published in France in the 1960s. But presumably it must have drawn attention to his new Debussy recording, which neatly fits both books of piano Preludes on to a single disc. As you'd expect, Aimard's accounts of the 24 pieces are technically impeccable, whether articulating every rhythmic detail in La Danse de Puck, or perfectly layering the chordal accumulations of La Cathédrale Engloutie, but there is something matter of fact about it all, a lack of character and colour, and certainly very little humour, whether in La Sérénade Interrompue or Hommage à S Pickwick Esq. Alongside Alexei Lubimov's recent revelatory ECM set on a piano of Debussy's time, let alone the classic recordings by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli and Krystian Zimerman (both also on DG), Aimard's version seems very much an also-ran.