Is it possible to make Schubert too beautiful? To put it another way: where is the line between naturally beautiful and artificially beautified? The question(s) crossed my mind listening to Volodos in the A major Sonata. Every phrase is so exquisitely turned, so perfectly graded in its nuances, so ideally blended – harmonically, melodically and in relation to what comes before and after – that it could be placed on exhibit for all to wonder at. Like all the great virtuosos, he knows how to bring spaciousness to the most technically demanding passages and inner life to the simplest. Soft dynamics in particular are near-miraculous. Volodos can whisper without losing definition, and then fine down his tone even further, scrupulously following Schubert’s markings. I wish I could wrap up his piano, technician, acoustic and recording engineers in a package and take them home with me. Not to mention his technique.

What then of the broader picture? Only in the slow movement – more Lento assai than Schubert’s Andantino – could the tempos be described as controversial; and even here the eloquence and fine nuance of the playing make it easy to capitulate. There is nothing superficial about Volodos’s emotional response, either here or in the troubled recesses of the Scherzo and Trio. And when the finale reaches its Presto coda, he lets loose his inner virtuoso to thrilling effect.

The problem – if it is a problem – is the sheer abundance of pianistic marvels. I do love the way Volodos eases into and through the first movement’s second subject; but he weaves exactly the same spell on the repeat, and in the recapitulation, and the magic thereby gives way to routine. Even at its first appearance the theme would surely have been even more effective had its pianissimo not been pre empted earlier on; and do the long notes have to stretch expressively the same way every time? Then wouldn’t the development section make its dramatic point more clearly if it travelled a little less bumpily in the early stages?

When every picture in the gallery is a masterpiece, somehow one’s responses become dulled. I wonder if Volodos in live performance would be slightly less concerned with making every phrase special and find ways to let the most special of them stand in greater relief. Even the extraordinary slow-release brainstorm at the heart of the slow movement is so perfectly chiselled that its shock value is somehow tamed.

Happy the collector with all four selected comparisons on their shelves, though none is beyond criticism. For me, neither Perahia nor Uchida are quite at their starry finest in this work. Decca’s recording for Lupu has some steeliness in fortissimo, and Brendel’s live BBC account sounds less than ideally clear. But then Lupu’s tempos are wonderfully natural, and neither he nor Brendel make the mistake of overloading the structure with special moments. Brendel’s finale takes the steadiest Allegretto of all, to the great benefit of its expressive/dramatic relationship to the rest of the work.

Volodos’s three minuets are cannily chosen for their family resemblances to the sonata. Perhaps he slightly forces a point by taking the C sharp minor, D600 – plausibly united with the unattached E major Trio, D610 – far slower than a minuet could ever be danced, presumably in order to draw out an affinity with the sonata’s slow movement. But I can perfectly see the point of not adding another sonata to the disc. And whatever reservations I may have expressed, Volodos is in a world of his own for sheer pianistic finesse.