The opening ‘Promenade’ sets the tone for the whole of Alice Sara Ott’s visit to Mussorgsky’s gallery. It sounds as though she is dragging a reluctant teenager behind her. The tempo marking is allegro giusto, not a subdued moderato, and immediately the fierce competition in this oft-recorded work has a head start: Richter, of course, in his legendary 1958 Sofia account (a live recording, like Ott’s); and, to pluck from the shelves at random a couple more versions by pianists with strong views about the work, Byron Janis (1961) and Sergio Tiempo (2006). The newcomer is a technically secure, thoroughly respectable guide to the exhibition but earthbound and literal by comparison. Tiempo’s scintillating ‘Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks’ is full of quirky fun; Richter’s ‘Baba-Yaga’ makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

The Schubert sonata that follows is the one with the extraordinary exploratory slow movement that frequently threatens to break into a samba and which concludes with the humorous ‘tick-tock’ Rondo. DG provides only skimpy information about both works; but it was written within the space of two weeks and, though all four movements are thematically and rhythmically highly contrasted, it is an attractive feature of this performance that it makes it so clear that they are peas from the same pod. Tempi again are on the conservative side (much in line with Paul Lewis’s highly praised version on Harmonia Mundi from 2011, though I prefer DG’s warmer and more immediate sound) and the Rondo is a decidedly dull affair compared with the incomparable Artur Schnabel (1939).