In this Wigmore Hall recital, Jonathan Biss sets out to demonstrate how much influence Schumann had on Janáček. He does so with aplomb, interspersing the Op 12 Fantasiestücke with On an Overgrown Path. That could have been something that worked better live than on disc; that it isn’t is a tribute to the strength of Biss’s conviction, and though Janáček’s uniquely tangy harmonic language is inimitable, there are more links between the two composers than you might imagine. Marc André Hamelin had a not dissimilar notion in his pairing of On an Overgrown Path with other pieces of Schumann, which was Recording of the Month in June. Though I like Hamelin’s approach in much of the more energised music, occasionally I found him too slow in some of the more introspective moments, especially compared with the reactivity of Páleníček and Firkušný.

Biss recalls Schumann’s changeability in the opening number of the Janáček cycle and particularly revels in the beauty of ‘The Frýdek Madonna’, though few can challenge Firkušný in his awestruck sense of loss. Biss conveys the fleeting nature of Schumann’s Op 12 to telling effect, though Argerich is more daring still, not least in her glittering ‘Traumes Wirren’ and in the finely honed rhetoric of the final piece.

He is equally well attuned to Davidsbündlertänze, which is by turns mercurial, witty, touching and commanding. Uchida is a more extreme experience, which won’t necessarily be to all tastes. But Biss is very much his own man, revealing often-overlooked textural details and lending plenty of impetuosity to movements such as ‘Wild und lustig’. But I also retain a very soft spot for Andreas Haefliger’s reading, wonderfully coloured and vividly characterised.

As an encore we get the last of the Gesänge der Frühe. If Anderszewski has a greater range of sonority, it is Uchida – even more than Biss – who squeezes the most emotion from Schumann’s halting, haunting lines.