Shani Diluka is a pianist whose playing throws open the doors to hitherto unimagined chambers within the realm of understatement. Her new recording of Schubert, prefacing the great B flat Sonata with a curious assortment of waltzes and German dances and the Mélodie hongroise, is subtitled ‘Des fragments aux étoiles’.

It was the critic James Huneker who first described the Chopin Waltzes as dances for the soul rather than the feet. With Schubert, however, there is evidence that he composed with the feet specifically in mind. Essentially all his dances were improvised on the spot for convivial gatherings of his friends, and the improvisations he deemed interesting would later be written down. If one imagines dancing at a Schubertiade to Diluka’s selection, it must have been an extremely slow and melancholy affair, the dancers perhaps dispirited at trying to keep time against the uncharacteristic and pervasive rubato of these performances. One does marvel at Diluka’s dynamic palette, with its range of mezzo-forte to the scarcely audible, and how she manages with so little.

Something of the same pastel, timidly non-committal atmosphere hovers over the B flat Sonata. In fact, amid such an abundance of indecisive articulation, a point of view is difficult to discern. In lieu of Schubert’s Andante sostenuto, Diluka opts for a glacial largo. In this context, the energy summoned for the concluding Allegro ma non troppo seems almost alarming. But even that final rush to the finish fails to cast off the aura of somnolence that enshrouds this CD.