Lars Vogt is an artist who likes to travel unexpected paths and behind every recording there’s always a sense that he has thought long and hard about the repertoire, be it Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Mozart sonatas or Schubert Impromptus. His latest offering of Janáček was recorded over a three-year period and, again, there’s no doubting his engagement with the music.

He begins with the Sonata and, though the playing is unfailingly impressive, I did find the opening movement, ‘Foreboding’, too lovingly fashioned, a little soft-edged compared to the fiery and fearsome classics by Rudolf Firkušný and Josef Páleníček, who are more starkly ferocious, for instance, at the climactic passage from 3'40". The taut, decimated grief that underlies the second movement, ‘Death’, is perhaps more convincingly captured, with Vogt revelling in the rare moments of consolation, but as the music skitters off into madness he sounds a tad sane.

There’s a lot to admire within In the Mists, from the long, arching lines he draws in the opening Andante, contrasting piquantly with the inner section, which begins with such shimmering fragility before building in fervency. In Vogt’s hands the Molto adagio becomes Impressionistic, its heady writing rudely interrupted by the angular interjections (though these are more startling still in the readings of Firkušný and Páleníček). The bardic quality of the Andantino is wonderfully brought to life but in the final Presto I found him just a little too considered; Páleníček by comparison brings to the fore the energy of Janáček’s trenchant rhythms.

Vogt seems most at home in the two books that make up On an Overgrown Path, balancing a sense of intimacy with a vividness of imagination that brings to life such pieces as ‘Our Evenings’ or the wistful ‘Good Night’, while ‘The Madonna of Frýdek’ is beautifully etched, with Vogt capturing the contrast between deep chords and an almost cimbalom-like tremolo. The sheer strangeness of ‘Unutterable Anguish’, too, is well caught, and ‘In Tears’, with its veiled, complex emotions and ambiguous ending, is another highlight. In some of the more extrovert pieces he can be a little restrained, not least ‘Come with us’, which is wonderfully ebullient in Páleníček’s reading, and ‘They chattered like swallows’, which is more febrile in Firkušný’s hands. The final piece of Book 1, ‘The barn owl has not flown away’, is thoughtfully presented but the nagging unease is perhaps a little underplayed, as if Vogt is trying to persuade us that things will, in spite of the owl’s association with death, turn out OK.

However, Vogt appreciates the emotionally obscure nature of the five untitled pieces of Book 2 and is bold enough to present them unadorned, from the obliquely strange Andante, via the second piece, with its haunting calls and dislocated rhythms, to the folkish trenchancy of the last, which has strength but never aggression. Vogt has been well recorded and the booklet interview is typically thoughtful.