As Maurizio Baglini launches into Carnaval, the first impression is of a muddy acoustic, in which the textures lose definition at the slightest touch of sustaining pedal. The ear does adjust after a while, but you’d expect better from Decca. Baglini is a highly reactive pianist, with technique to spare, and in the earlier pieces this can be effective, particularly in Schumann’s scintillating Op 1, the Abegg Variations, which has plenty of delightful delicacy. But in the slow variation the lack of definition in the recording is a distinct minus.

In the next opus, Papillons, there’s the same level of hyper-reactivity, which is all to the good, but sometimes notes stick out oddly from the textures and what was febrile in Op 1 does in places begin to sound frenetic here. But back to Carnaval, which features on both Baglini’s and Wojciech Kocyan’s discs, and we have two very different approaches. The danger with this astounding gallery of character pieces is that if you push the extremes inherent in the music too far those characters lapse into caricatures. This is all too well demonstrated in Baglini’s reading: sample the exaggeratedly fey ‘Eusebius’, for instance, replete with desynchronisations of the hands, which is followed by a strangely wayward ‘Florestan’; and ‘Papillons’ (which in Baglini’s performance follows Schumann’s hidden ‘Sphinxes’, a movement that Kocyan, in line with most modern pianists, doesn’t play) sound very big-boned butterflies indeed; Kocyan is closer to the letter of the score but in his attempt to make every note clear in this movement he ends up sounding over-cautious. To discover the ideal combination of speed, clarity and lightness, turn either to Rachmaninov or Marc-André Hamelin and be blown away.

As for Faschingsschwank, Baglini is again unable to keep a single tempo for more than a bar at a time; Kocyan fares better, particularly in the nervosity of the ‘Intermezzo’. But Pires remains supreme in this piece.

The inclusion of the relatively rare Gesänge der Frühe should be a selling point for Kocyan but there are some woefully slow tempi (Nos 1 and 5 in particular) that do this quietly solemn sequence no favours, as comparison with Pollini immediately confirms.