The Georgian pianist Khatia Buniatishvili, now just into her thirties, is an artist of strong convictions but it is still a bold move to choose D960 for her first Schubert recording. It’s an equally strong move to channel Millais’s Ophelia for the cover and booklet photos, where she also offers musings entitled ‘Notes of a Feminist’. The link to Schubert? Unclear.

The playing is more clearly focused, however, though it’s a reading of extremes that will either beguile or frustrate. The sonata’s opening is a breathy affair, each phrase almost cherished to death, while there’s a notable speeding-up (unmarked) through the passage of semiquaver accompaniment, so much so that when the main theme returns against triplet writing it’s at a completely different tempo to the start. All this contributes to a sense of a lack of a constant pulse, leaving the listener in danger of losing their way. Buniatishvili pushes things still further in the development, where there’s also some characterfully skittish playing – when she’s not daydreaming she can offer a powerful sense of narrative, just not often enough.

The problems are at their most extreme in the Andante sostenuto, where her tempo is veeeery slow. To give you an idea, it lasts 14 and a half minutes; Uchida, Zimerman and Andsnes are all four minutes shorter, while it’s a world away from Pires’s highly communicative, genuinely flowing account, which manages to be highly personal yet entirely in the service of the composer. With the switch to A major Buniatishvili again speeds up as she reaches the triplet section (unmarked) – if it’s supposed to sound spontaneous, it doesn’t, merely a tad unstable.

Hints of what could have been come in the Scherzo, which is fleet and effortless; the same cannot be said of the Trio, though, whose accents are about as subtle as a Versace logo. The finale sets off at a convincing pace, with a sense of both the sweep and the detail of what is unfolding before our ears. The climaxes are perhaps a little overblown, but otherwise it’s persuasive. Unfortunately it’s not enough to ameliorate the issues of the first two movements.

The D899 Impromptus are also a mixed bag – The G flat major (No 3) works best as it’s allowed to speak for itself; No 4 is on the fast side, though technically it can’t be faulted (but turn to Uchida and you find much more of a pensive quality underlying the surface effect); No 2 is also somewhat rushed, Zimerman finding a lyrical perfection here. And the First gets weighed down by overly prissy phrasing, which can’t compete with Lupu’s tolling sadness or Zimerman’s eloquence at a more flowing tempo.

Buniatishvili closes with the Liszt/Schubert ‘Ständchen’, which is a little on the slow side for my taste – I prefer Marc André Hamelin, who brings out the glorious melody and counter-melody more convincingly. There’s no doubting Buniatishvili’s considerable pianistic powers, nor her abundant imagination, but overall this seems a disc that promotes her rather than Schubert’s sublime music.