Winner of the prestigious Premio Venezia prize, Vincenzo Maltempo rides high among many young and gifted Italian pianists. And after his Alkan discs (6/14, 9/14), it is appropriate that he should open his present Schumann recital with the Third Sonata, pre-dating Alkan’s own Concert sans orchestre. Like the First Sonata but unlike the Second, the F minor Sonata is the reverse of compact, a wild outpouring that must have thrown Clara’s more conservative nature as well as adding fuel to Chopin’s scorn. The Prestissimo possibile finale in particular, with its bolt of lightning before the tearaway coda, shows Schumann as if pursued by the demons of hell.

Such writing, of a fierce virtuoso intricacy, suits Maltempo’s impulsive nature ideally. Less contained than Pollini and more attuned to Horowitz’s flamboyance, his performance captures all of Schumann’s teeming imagination. True, the sonata’s opening rhetorical gesture is less than articulate and Maltempo’s rubato can be fitful and impulsive, but he has more than the measure of Schumann’s volatility and is always true to his own romantic lights.

The turbulent First Romance again provides ideal fodder and so to does the Third, with its grotesque galumphing march rhythm. And while I would hardly class Maltempo’s Humoreske with Lupu (gloriously sensitive to Eusebius, Schumann’s man of dreams) or Anderszewski (no less alert to Florestan, the man of action), it is nonetheless remarkable. Above all, Maltempo’s well-recorded performances have nothing of the studio but crackle with all the electricity of the concert hall.