Angela Hewitt has picked two of Schumann’s more recalcitrant offspring for her latest recital. While both are suffused with glorious music, formally they break all conventional notions: the sonata in its end-heavy structure, the Humoreske defying categorisation with its single 25-minute span embracing an extraordinary range of moods, often in a matter of bars.

As ever with this pianist, we get playing that is thoughtful, thought-provoking, finely finished and intricately nuanced. She imbues the opening movement of the sonata with a sure sense of structure and pace, and finds more energy than many of her rivals in the Scherzo. But I find her slow movement simply too slow (interestingly she took a similar approach in the slow movement of Beethoven’s Op 10 No 3 Sonata). At such a dreamy tempo she simply can’t sustain the line. Pollini is supreme here, combining tenderness and an awestruck gaze at a more flowing tempo. He is also the pianist to whom I’d turn for an example of how to make Schumann’s somewhat sectionalised finale work. In many interpretations this sounds more like a sequence of fleeting mini-movements than an overarching whole but the Italian combines a grandeur of conception with wonderfully balanced voicings. He also revels in the joyous moments (as does Perahia), compared to which Hewitt seems slightly muted.

The Humoreske can take a variety of approaches but what needs to come across is its almost Vorticist emotional ride. Though the title might suggest something light-hearted, this is anything but. He composed it at white heat in 1839, writing to Clara, “It’s perhaps my most melancholy work�. Radu Lupu is supreme here, living every note as if it were his last. With Hewitt there’s sometimes a feeling that the emotion doesn’t come entirely from within, with overdone rallentandos and some (to my ears) slightly unconvincing tempo changes. But again, she offers her own perspective on the work, even if it’s somewhat cool for my taste.

How good, in Claire Désert’s new CD, to have the Op 4 Intermezzi complete, for what miraculous pieces they are. She pairs them with the masterly Davidsbündlertänze, written in 1837, just two years before the Humoreske. Désert’s reading captures the sense of fleeting moods through the 18 highly contrasted character studies, but she is hampered by an unbeautiful recorded sound, over-resonant in the bass, and her dynamic range tends to be limited – a pity given Schumann’s many shades of rapt pianissimo. Ultimately, though her playing is sensitive, she doesn’t propel the notes off the page as Andreas Haefliger so vividly manages. In Schumann’s more unbridled moments, such as the fourth of the Davidsbündlertänze or the Intermezzi Nos 2 and 6, she comes across as a safe pair of hands rather than an interpreter of real insight. And if there’s one thing that doesn’t fit this composer, it’s a sense of safety.