Oh dear. Listening to the opening of the C minor Impromptu, you do wish that Rudolf Buchbinder would leave it alone. This is not to say that he shouldn’t play it, but that its artless simplicity is undermined by the mannerism of interpretation. The booklet-note puts a positive spin on this by saying that Buchbinder presents the opening theme ‘in a tentative, cautious guise, interrupted time after time by questioning caesuras’, but his poeticising stance seems to sit uneasily with the music itself. There are more of those caesuras in the otherwise limpid E flat major and A flat major Impromptus, and a great deal of rubato in the G flat major. It is clear that Buchbinder rightly views Schubert as a proto-Romantic but this is Schubert-playing that takes too little account of the equally important Classical poise and taste that can be appreciated and enjoyed much more fully in the performances by Maria João Pires on DG.

The B flat major Sonata fares better. There is an apt blend of grandeur and sensitivity, with a clarity of definition to Buchbinder’s structural scheme in the long first movement (done with the exposition repeat) and with the touches of tonal colouring and contemplative pausing less obtrusive than in the Impromptus. The shaping of the musical discourse here is much more compelling, the Andante deeply reflective but held in emotional perspective, the scherzo light and crisply accented, the finale combining spirit and weight with interpretative discretion and strength of reasoning.