Poor old Ludwig Schuncke! He makes Mozart and Schubert seem long-lived, dying of tuberculosis in 1834, two weeks shy of his 24th birthday. This is the first CD dedicated to his music and Tatiana Larionova is a sympathetic advocate. The most ambitious work here is Schuncke’s G minor Grande Sonata, dedicated to his friend Schumann, who returned the favour by dedicating his Toccata to him. Schuncke was only 21 when he composed it, so it’s perhaps not surprising that, though full of fire (and notes!), it’s not exactly the last word in formal or harmonic innovation. Larionova is well up to its technical challenges, though the resonant acoustic doesn’t flatter the more fingery passagework; this she dispatches proficiently, but it could perhaps have had more in the way of light and shade (how well Howard Shelley would play this piece). In the Andante sostenuto, too, she is simply too slow; it comes off much more persuasively in the hands of Mario Patuzzi, who also displays a degree more fervour in the Scherzo.

‘Brillant’ is a word that repeatedly crops up, and at times Larionova sounds a touch too careful – in the glistening the Divertissement brillant or the First Caprice, an entirely different prospect from the darker-hued Second Caprice, dedicated to Chopin and seeming in places to prefigure Liszt. The Rondeau brillant does pretty much what it says on the tin, though Schuncke comes up with a lusciously Chopinesque melody (tr 8, 2'32"). And to end, a truly silly set of variations which clothes a simple Swiss melody in increasingly outlandish garb. Once again, I felt Larionova could have let her hair down a little more, though her dedication to Schuncke’s cause is to be applauded.