The booklet informs us that Laurent Cabasso (new to the British CD catalogue) studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Yankoff, Hubeau and Ivaldi before ''enrichment through other masters'' including Magaloff, Sandor, Brainin and Curcio. He was a finalist in the 1987 Clara Haskil Competition after winning the Alex de Vries Prize in Antwerp in 1977 and the Geza Anda and Tokyo Competitions in 1982 and 1983 respectively. We're also told that it was in the classical and romantic German repertoire that he first established himself, and that nowadays he is ''passionate about chamber music''.
In these two Schubert sonatas he impressed me as a genuinely caring musician. And though of introspective cast of mind he has as scrupulous a concern for letter as for spirit. In the late A major work he opts for breadth rather than brilliance; his tempo throughout is considerably more leisurely than Pollini's (DG)—and to a slightly lesser extent Brendel's, too, in all but the finale. And in its clear definition I had the impression that every detail of texture had been orchestrated in his mind. In passing, I questioned the phrase-end pauses he introduces in the first movement's second subject. In the Andantino I wondered if his concern for detail was militating against the underlying inexorability of the melodic flow. The Scherzo in its turn needs a bit more sparkle, and surely there is too much relaxation of tension in the Trio despite his very characterful left hand. Pollini and Brendel (Philips) reward you with a stronger sense of direction: their performances have a more arresting intensity and immediacy (and from Pollini, as SP first observed, you also get pianism of a transcendental refinement and beauty as well). But in his own less graphic way I still thought Cabasso sympathetically aware of the spiritual issues at stake. The recording is close and full-bodied, with just a trace of something that doesn't sound wholly natural (is plumminess the word?) in the bass.
In the early A minor Sonata I would have liked more sustained rhythmic animation (and more piquant accentuation here and there would have helped, as notably from Dalberto on Denon) in the two flanking movements. But in the Allegretto Cabasso's concern for contrasts of staccato and legato and various textural felicities pays rich dividends. Comparison with his two rivals in this work is very much a case of roundabouts and swings.'