Pianist Sergei Kvitko’s booklet notes discuss at great length the conception and evolution of this all-Schubert programme centred around the Six Moments musicaux and the D899 Impromptus, from launching it in Kyiv on Schubert’s birthday on January 31, 2020, just prior to the pandemic, to the release of this live April 2022 performance in Madrid. What the pianist writes about his music, however, is less important than how he plays these frequently recorded works.

Kvitko takes the first of the Moments musicaux at a tempo that’s more of an adagio than a moderato, microscopically probing the notes and phrases, ultimately undermining the cross-rhythmic implications in Schubert’s phrase groupings. No 2 unfolds at a relatively ‘normal’ and flowing pace, albeit with a monumental patina to the outsize dynamics. No 3 evokes Emil Gilels’s 1960s studio recording in that it splits the difference between jaunty and weighty; I suspect that the simplicity Kvitko achieves was hard-won. No 4’s contrapuntal outer sections are a little square and down-beat-orientated, in contrast to the Trio’s freedom and breadth. No 5’s obsessive dotted rhythms sometimes surge ahead in the heat of the moment and really swing. In No 6 Kvitko’s spacious, long-lined phrasing prevents his slow tempo from turning static or immobile.

The C minor Impromptu’s stark dimensions and serious demeanour contrast with the narrative sweep and flexibility I prefer in Alexandre Tharaud’s recent recording (Erato, 12/21), not to mention Artur Schnabel’s stunning fusion of power and poetry. Yet the way that Kvitko’s E flat Second Impromptu takes angular wing surely compensates. It takes a few pages for Kvitko’s G flat Third Impromptu to find its focus and redress the proper balance between melody, bass line and the rippling accompaniment. However, the pianist’s patrician control easily justifies the expressive leeway characterising No 4’s cascading runs. With the major works out of the way, Kvitko lets his guard down and digs into the Two Scherzos as if enjoying a much-anticipated dessert. Then he shatters the congenial mood with a spiky, slow-motion and wilfully exaggerated reading of the Minuet in C sharp minor: an odd call for such a gifted pianist.