Jean Muller continues his series of Mozart piano sonatas, launched almost a year ago (4/19), when it came up against the inaugural volume of another cycle, by Peter Donohoe. Once again, the two pianists coincide in one sonata, the D major, K311, which appears on Donohoe’s second volume (Somm, 9/19). Comparisons yield similar findings: where Donohoe plays through the rhetoric – sonata as continuous discourse – Muller differentiates more keenly between phrases, often deploying minute agaogic pauses to set them off from each other. Nevertheless, Muller can’t match Donohoe’s imaginative expression in certain speedier passages; strings of semiquavers emerge with a more shapely profile in the Mancunian’s hands, as opposed to the Luxembourgeois pianist’s more even production.

Muller is sensitive and poetic in the slower music, such as the opening Adagio of the E flat Sonata, K282. His Steinway is recorded with sufficient analytic focus to reveal inner lines clearly, further distinguishing this cycle from the more generous acoustic in which Donohoe’s Bechstein is captured. Perhaps the trade-off comes in a want of Mozartian playfulness, which comes through in spades in Marc-André Hamelin’s recording of the same sonata’s finale (Hyperion, 5/15).

All is played with sufficient style, with subtle ornamentation in reprises and a concern never to distort the music through eccentricity or point-making. Muller captures the innocence of the C major, K279, and the driving impetus of the opening Allegro of the D major, K284. Other favourite sets of the sonatas may illuminate more brightly the many facets of these deceptively simple works but Muller is a perceptive guide to this music.