Franz Schubert, Valery Afanassiev

The Moscow-born pianist Valery Afanassiev is known for strikingly personal, inward readings of Schubert, and this album pairs two of the composer's more outgoing works: the six Moments musicaux D. 780 and the Piano Sonata in D major D. 850. It was his second Schubert album for ECM, after the live recording of the last Sonata D. 960 made at the 1986 Lockenhaus Festival, a disc that became a connoisseur's favourite.

Afanassiev recorded both works in September 2010 at the Auditorio Radiotelevisione svizzera in Lugano, in collaboration with RSI Rete Due. Peter Laenger was the engineer and Manfred Eicher produced. The pianist also wrote the booklet essay. In it he describes the music as a "no-time's land", a suspended moment in which the listener lingers. He calls the sonata "an assortment of games" played by Schubert and the pianists who return to it. The programme lasts just under 71 minutes.

Schubert wrote the Moments musicaux between 1823 and 1827, a year before his death, and the set is full of song and dance, with sudden turns from major to minor. Afanassiev takes his time with them. The F minor Allegro moderato moves at roughly half the usual tempo, and the C sharp minor Moderato is etched with close attention to inner voices. In the A flat Andantino he separates the bass notes of the broken-chord accompaniment and uses little pedal, so the texture stays dry and exposed. The Sonata D. 850 of 1825 is one of Schubert's most exuberant, with yodel-like tunes, imitated horn calls and strongly syncopated rhythms. Here the first movement is measured rather than headlong, the Con moto is dark and searching, and the playful side of the closing Rondo comes through clearly.

The album divided opinion, as Afanassiev's Schubert usually does. Dominy Clements of MusicWeb International (2013) found the readings stimulating and the sound beautifully engineered. He also called it a "love or loathe" interpretation, and he missed the natural flow of Radu Lupu's recording. Tyran Grillo at ECM Reviews heard in it a balance of ebullience and melancholy, with the sonata's massive first movement giving way to a more introspective second.

CD, ECM New Series 2215, first released in September 2012.