While Vladimir Ashkenazy has enjoyed a high-profile conducting career in recent years, it is as a pianist that he is most likely to be remembered and in his piano recordings that his recreative personality burns most brightly. He makes fewer of them these days, but his set of the 24 Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues (Decca, 6/99) proved that he can still pull out all the stops, and this follow-up is very nearly as good.

Ashkenazy’s big-boned approach to the sonata may come as a shock to those reared on Emil Gilels’ gentler, more patrician conception and I won’t pretend that everything Ashkenazy does is tonally ingratiating. His opening lacks poise, especially if you’re used to Gilels’ longer lines and luminous legato. That said, Ashkenazy’s revitalisation of what can seem a rather abstract, introverted composition is worth a few clangourous corners. The rest of his programme is a mixed bag. If the somewhat unimaginative transcriptions of familiar Shostakovich bon-bons could perhaps have done with a lighter touch, the inclusion of 1920s rarities will be welcomed by serious collectors. The 10 Aphorisms are fascinating experiments in modernism, reminiscent of Prokofiev or Bartók though without their certainty of focus. And to link this release with its predecessor we have the Five Preludes, early instances of Bachian homage from the precocious student composer.

Ashkenazy’s emotive, hard-hitting manner (generally finely calculated, although I feared for the piano mechanism four minutes into the finale of the main work) is flattered by Decca’s discreetly spacious, very ‘tangible’ recording. It comes in four-channel SACD surround sound, SACD stereo and conventional CD stereo, encoded onto the one hybrid disc in what is a technical departure for the label. Eric Roseberry’s booklet-notes are eminently sound, the art direction perhaps less so.