Debussy rather grudingly admitted that he knew of no one who had evoked Paris better than Puccini. Yet the Parisian composer himself usually sought inspiration further afield, often from the sea, famously so at Eastbourne in the case of La Mer. So in a piano recital at nearby Alfriston on the Sussex Downs, it seemed fitting that Alexandra Silocea should begin her imaginative, water-themed programme with three Debussy pieces.

Giving the closing concert of the first Matthew Rose and Friends festival (a refreshing new song-and-chamber-music series curated by the fast-rising bass), the young Romanian pianist quickly disclosed both complete technical security and that deeply layered colouring so essential to such works as Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau. She was no less commanding in the exuberant fountains imagined by Liszt and Ravel, or in the tears behind Liszt's viruosic Variations on Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen.

The premiere of Martin Romberg's Earendil, its title meaning "Lover of the Sea" in Tolkien's invented Quenya language, showed a composer still relying on Ravelian harmonies. But Liszt was the towering figure of this programme, which found Silocea cleverly coupling his late, experimental Nuages gris Orage and bringing out the lyrical melancholy of two Schubert-Liszt song arrangements.