Great music can take many different interpretations. But there are times when a distinguished artist seems to have wandered into territory that seems ill-fitting in terms of temperament and technique, and I have to confess Peter Donohoe playing Mozart is one such instance. On the upside, he has at his disposal a lovely instrument: a Bechstein warmly recorded at the Birmingham Conservatoire.

One area in which the pianist does consistently convince are his tempos, and the first movement of the First Sonata, K279, has an apt buoyancy to it, though the ornamentation tends towards the rough and ready, and energy comes at the expense of finesse of phrasing. The sonata’s Andante is short-changed on a vital strand of elegance, and the heart-rending shift to the minor (from 2'30") passes for relatively little. Happily the closing Allegro, with its quasi-Scarlattian brilliance, is more successful, with Donohoe conveying its extroversion with a will.

In the Fifth Sonata, K283, I again found myself longing for more poetry; and while some might admire his unsentimental view of the slow movement I wanted more yearning, something Uchida supplies in abundance. The trumpets-and-drums effects of the finale are nicely paced but the figuration is not as clean as it could be.

In the Allegro of the much-loved K332 (No 12) there’s a generalised brusqueness that underplays the differing characters of Mozart’s themes, and while Donohoe offers a more sensitive view of the middle movement, it lacks the songfulness of Uchida and others. He emphasises the Beethovenian pre-echoes of the Allegro assai, which can be effective in the louder moments but less so in the quiet music.

Included are two relative rarities, both of which deserve to get out more. Donohoe points up to good effect the unorthodox nature of the harmonic sequence that launches the Minuet in D, K355, but this does tire as the piece proceeds. The G minor Allegro, K312, is a late fragment, dating from the year before Mozart’s death. And while Donohoe captures its sense of tumult, how much more tellingly (I know I’m comparing unlike with unlike in terms of instruments) does Bezuidenhout bring alive its gnawing emotional unrest.

Though colleagues seem to have enjoyed previous volumes more than me, I can’t file this as anything but a mishit and, when there are so many other options available, this is only recommendable for diehard fans of Donohoe.