To a greater extent than almost any other keyboard masterpiece, Schubert’s B flat Sonata has been recorded by the very finest pianists. And clearly for Schnabel, Kempff, Brendel, Richter, Lupu, Uchida, Annie Fisher, Pollini, Kovacevich, Perahia and, more recently, Paul Lewis (to name but 11), D960 remains an everelusive and daunting challenge. Cruelly, Ikuyo Kamiya is hardly in this league. Indeed, her overall bluntness and generality are easily surpassed by other lesser artists than the above. Where is the tonal sheen and translucence inseparable from such music, where the capacity to listen with super-sensitive ears and seek out every subtle harmonic and rhythmic felicity? The first movement takes time to recover from the lurch with which it is launched, and poise and focus are hardly terms that come to mind at the start of the finale. There is so little sense in such dogged, workaday playing of Schubert’s need for a seamless legato and cantabile, for an awareness that he was, after all, the greatest of all songwriters. Matters hardly improve in a selection of three Impromptus: Kamiya’s leaden way with the scintillating No 2 in E flat is notably regrettable. The F minor Moment musical is played first on a modern piano and then on a historic Matthaus Andreas Stein (1776-1842) instrument, a gesture of little more than passing interest. A tubby, bassheavy sound and notes inhospitably nearly all in Japanese make this essentially a national rather than international product.