Think for instance of Walter Gieseking, and his performances of K331 and K332 (EMI Icons) that combine precisely articulated playing, sensitive to text but unruffled about content, of Mozart approached with a reticence – even reverence – customary among many musicians in the 1950s. Shades of that long-distant aspect return with Noriko Ogawa, her unblemished technique circumscribed by an unwillingness to give in to the music.

Recreative fires tend to burn low and inhibitions surface through a lack of fluidity within chosen tempi, though each one is valid in itself. Ogawa is exact in her outlook, inflexibly so in the ‘Alla turca’ movement of K331, prosaic in the opening Andante grazioso; and though she relaxes into a greater degree of commitment in the Adagio and Allegro assai finale of K332, constraints are evident. Ogawa frequently detaches herself from a personal response which would bring alive the unique character of each work.

Sparks of affection and inspiration, individual to each artist, run through the performances of Kristian Bezuidenhout, Daniel-Ben Pienaar and Maria-João Pires. They take on the emotional communication of pathos in the Andante cantabile’s F minor section of K330 that Ogawa only hints at; and are constantly aware of the variety inherent in structures, using fluctuating levels of tone and accent to shape the phrases within. They too are masters of exactness as they also are of the elastically expressive line, and fearlessly seize all opportunities for interpretations of consequence. Ogawa declines most of them.