Today‚ Italy is at the forefront where gifted young pianists are concerned‚ and Paolo Giacometti’s enterprising Schumann recital celebrates his warmth and affection for the most romantic of all composers. But although he is responsive to so many kaleidoscopically fluctuating moods‚ to Eusebius (the man of dreams) and Florestan (the man of action) – Schumann’s most dearly cherished fictions – his rhythm is often more sluggish than vivacious and all three works on this disc exist in more pianistically adroit and poetically acute recordings. One of the reasons for an overall impression of dullness is Giacometti’s 1847 blunt and opaque Streicher‚ an instrument that hardly encourages the sound to bloom or expand with sufficient vividness or clarity. The floating melody in Fantasiestücke’s ‘Des Abends’‚ for example‚ emerges as weak and colourless‚ making a proper balance with its surrounding diaphanous web hard to achieve. The result is pedestrian rather than inward and so‚ too‚ is much of the Humoreske‚ where the transfiguring final pages fail to make their truest impact. One has only to listen to the incomparable Radu Lupu in this work to be reminded of how Schumann’s sunset codas can act like a magical prism that transforms previous realities into an iridescent dream world. Giacometti is no match for such artistry‚ nor can he approach the summer lightening that flashes through Martha Argerich’s Fantasiestücke. In the Toccata‚ one of Schumann’s unapologetically virtuoso but superbly ordered works‚ he gets off to an uncomfortable start and‚ again‚ is outclassed at every point by exuberant Berezovsky‚ rhythmically razor­sharp Pogorelich and‚ indeed‚ by fleet­fingered Freddy Kempf‚ while recordings by Horowitz and Richter remain classics of the recorded Schumann repertoire. The sound is reasonable‚ the instrument inadequate.