The 2009 Van Cliburn joint first prizewinner continues his recorded traversal of Himalayan pianistic peaks. Reviewers have justly praised Haochen Zhang’s remarkable technical fluency and ear for colouristic detail. The question is whether those qualities are in the service of a higher artistic vision or merely indulged in for their own sake.

Or is the answer a bit of both? Perhaps surprisingly, his Hammerklavier comes off a good deal better than the Liszt Sonata. Like the most intrepid pianistic athletes, Zhang sticks as close as humanly possible to Beethoven’s supersonic first-movement metronome mark. To do so with minimal gabble is a superb achievement, and the clarity throughout is phenomenal. Connoisseurs of detail may also relish moments of effective half-pedalling. Overall, the effect is to emphasise energy over struggle, impetuosity over architecture. But in a market crowded with star contenders, there surely has to be room for such a view, set forth as classily as here.

Voicing and pedalling are no less fine in the slow movement. Is it visionary? Perhaps not so much. But beautifully poised, yes, indeed, and without egregious point-making. Something is arguably lost in the final fugue thanks to the sheer ease with which the knottiest corners are negotiated, and this is not a performance that suggests Beethoven pushing to the edge of human possibility. Yet, in compensation, Zhang’s ear for polyphonic interplay is sufficiently remarkable as to make you feel you have never heard some passages properly played before.

Glowing reviews for his Transcendental Studies (A/23) raise the highest expectations for his Liszt Sonata. I was prepared, then, to give him the benefit of the doubt for his hesitations in the opening pages, which sound tacked on, over-practised and over-calculated. Confidence is restored as the main part of the first ‘movement’ goes like a bat out of hell, with more of Zhang’s signature uber-clarity in passagework. Yet it is not long before the rhetorical high points bring more stop-start phrasing, by now not just pointless but intensely annoying. There is abundant passion in the slow movement, and Zhang’s rubato at its best is both pliant and personal. The scherzo-finale, too, is another tour de force of polyphonic voicing. But for me the push-me-pull-you mannerism of his phrasing, once established, is hard to get past – a blot on an otherwise outstanding issue, which, incidentally, comes with first-rate recorded sound.