Llŷr Williams’s first commercial disc – an all-Chopin selection including the Preludes – Quartz, 8/06) – received quite harsh criticism from Bryce Morrison. Since then positive reactions to his concert performances and discs (notably his complete Beethoven sonatas on Signum) have outweighed negative ones, though not without some reservations. While I couldn’t possibly go so far as Morrison’s verdict of ‘student-level performances’ suffering ‘the musical equivalent of middle age spread’, I fear my reactions to his Schubert discs are not much more sympathetic.

These two volumes include the twin peaks among the sonatas – the mighty A major and the otherworldly B flat – alongside the Wanderer Fantasy and the Moments musicaux, and it certainly takes some self-assurance to start a Schubert survey this way. His technical fluency is unquestionable, and execution is remarkably clean given that these are live performances. But for someone who claims a special affinity for opera and the voice, and who regularly accompanies singers, not least at the Cardiff Singer of the World competition, his Schubert suffers from an equally remarkable lack of lyricism, drama and flow.

The heavenly Andante sostenuto of the B flat Sonata, for instance, feels as though stuck in a traffic jam. Not that glacial tempos are necessarily a problem, as Richter’s transcendental account proves. The main problem is that the flow is so often disturbed either by lack of imaginative phrasing or by rapidly predictable agogic hesitations, right from the opening of the same sonata’s first movement. Tone and voicing are not Williams’s strong suits either. Later in this same movement, he persists in emphasising the treble when the actual theme material is in the tenor (as almost all performers realise, and as Schubert’s sketches confirm). Once in a while when Schubert is at his most Beethovenian – as in the finale of the A major Sonata, which is actually modelled on the corresponding movement of Beethoven’s Op 31 No 1 – there is some compelling urgency in the playing. But more often these readings feel, well, just like readings, prior to the emergence of true interpretation, and with little sign of affinity between performer and composer. Perhaps the hall and/or the piano are partially responsible for what sounds like poor tone production. But if so, why release the recordings at all?

I wish I could say that the two first volumes of Williams’s Schubert odyssey have whetted my appetite for the rest of his journey. Sadly, no.