How to make Chopin your own? That’s a challenge every pianist faces, and those who cheered Simon Trpčeski on to a perhaps excessive five encores at the end of this recital would say their man has met it. While his determination not to take the obvious approach led some of the smaller-scale pieces in intriguing directions, it arguably left the larger-scales ones wanting.

He opened with the four Op 24 mazurkas. In the first, his left hand was grounded but his right was sometimes skittish and inclined to break away, creating an interesting tension within the piece’s apparent simplicity. These introspective pieces came over well, as did the first of the two Op 26 polonaises, which largely shared their pensive restlessness. But Op 26 No 2 needed brilliance and definition in the upwards reaching run near the start, and instead of that just had bulk and solidity. This became a recurring element: Trpčeski wasn’t going to let us fall into the trap of admiring Chopin’s surface glitter, but in his determination to focus our attention elsewhere he created some thick, cumbersome textures.

The two Op 48 nocturnes were often supple and dreamy-sounding, and at one point in No 1 Trpčeski seemed to be testing the piano’s resonances, just letting the notes ring. But in Scherzos Nos 1 and 2 the approach again grew dogged. The fast, often-repeated signature passage of No 1 was a noisy scamper that sped by in a blur, its pitches undefined. It was as if speed were everything here – as if Trpčeski were concerned more with the idea of the scherzo than the actuality of it. In No 2, he seemed unwilling to let the sweeping melody sing out fully. After all this and the five encores, which included several charmingly understated miniatures, it felt we had been shown new aspects of Chopin but stubbornly denied the full picture.