Listen to Adam Laloum caress the gentle return of the main theme at the end of the A major Sonata’s first movement and you know you’re in the hands of a Schubertian with breathtaking tonal sensitivity. Listen to the storm erupt in the B section of the second movement and you know he’s also got sufficient reserves of power and the ability to unleash it without roughening the sound of his instrument. He’s a painstaking musician as well: the large-scale architecture seems rigorously thought out, every detail scrupulously considered. When you add to that his unerring technique, his tactful elasticity of phrasing (the opening section of the first Moment is especially luxurious) and his unfailing textural clarity, you have a rewarding contribution to the Schubert discography.

Rewarding – but not equally so for everyone, since some may find Laloum’s vision of Schubert’s art too even-tempered. This is Schubert with poignance but without despair, Schubert with patience (most of his tempos are on the slow side) but without the meditative transcendence that the mature Richter used to bring, say, to the sixth Moment. In the faster passages, most notably the Sonata’s Scherzo, there’s a trace of restraint that keeps the music from taking off; and when the music turns vehement, Laloum gives us no sense that he’s testing the limits of the piano, as Gilels did in his white-hot assault on the fifth Moment (11/69). Throughout, accents are liable to be civil rather than hard-hitting (rarely do they bite). Michelle Assay called his previous Schubert album ‘under-interpreted’ (4/20), and there’s a similar quality to these plain-spoken readings, which rarely assert themselves.

Still, for all their discretion, there’s much to enjoy in the sheer beauty and intelligence of these superbly engineered performances – enough so that even those who prefer a more extreme take on Schubert owe it to themselves to get acquainted.