I doubt if the teacher who once banned the 23-year-old me from playing Schubert’s last piano sonata because she thought I hadn’t suffered enough to be worthy of playing it could have accused Dina Ugorskaja of the same thing. Ugorskaja lost her battle with cancer in September 2019, at the age of 46, and this all-Schubert disc is in a way the Russian-born, German-based pianist’s communication from beyond the grave. The spectre of death is omnipresent, and not only in the programme – that B flat Sonata alongside the three late Klavierstücke – but even in the cover photo. Her short-cropped hair instead of her hallmark Medusa-like locks, together with her obviously frail frame, are heartbreaking reminders of the fragility of life.

Maybe the tragic context of the album shouldn’t affect our experience; but it inevitably does. So too does the recorded sound, which is surprisingly non atmospheric (compare with Uchida on Philips, Radu Lupu on Decca and Schiff on ECM). Then there is Ugorskaja’s slow and often static approach, epitomised in her double-length bass trill at the end of the first phrase of the sonata. This certainly fits with her booklet-note remark – ‘in this music time occasionally seems to stand still’. Within this state of pervasive lingering, if you can go with it, she explores some precious details. Hear, for instance, the subtle yet magical response in the bass at 17'47" or her astute attention to pedalling in the second movement. In fact, all through the disc, every single motif is charged with meaning.

But one person’s meaningful is another’s mannered and self-conscious. Apart from placing the flow of the music at the risk of stagnation, Ugorskaja’s absorption in details results in something akin to a visitor to the Sistine Chapel who is forced to look only at the extraordinary details of individual figures on a screen and to leave without having taken in the grandeur of the overall conception. For the bigger picture I find myself drawn back to Uchida with her aloof poetry, to Richter’s transcendental stoicism and to Maria Yudina’s spiritual abandon (her opening bars are even slower than Ugorskaja but she creates a true dramatic whirlpool by juxtaposing them with ecstatic outbursts). The other trap with the B flat Sonata, which Ugorskaja falls into, is that by overcharging the first two movements semantically and emotionally, the narrative does not carry over with any logic into the exuberant Scherzo and finale. Lupu and Schiff both avoid this pitfall by avoiding an excess of self-indulgence in the first two movements and creating a balanced structure.

The transcendental trajectory of the sonata is reflected in the rest of the programme, from the darkness of the three Klavierstücke to the light of the Moments musicaux. The former are among Schubert’s works that need some selling if they are not to overstay their welcome; Ugorskaja is impassioned but heavy here, and no match for Uchida’s mercurial characterisation and limpid tone, or Schiff’s magical evocations on his fortepiano. There are moments of true delight in Ugorskaja’s exploration of the chiaroscuro of the Moments musicaux and somehow, perhaps because of their brevity, their wholeness does not suffer as much as in the sonata from overemphasis on detail. Yet again it is worth turning to Lupu every now and then, if only to let some air in.