Alfred Schnittke may not have written the most idiomatic and finger-friendly piano music of his time. Yet he surely understood and internalised the instrument’s capabilities and limitations, while at the same time showing little respect for even the best pianists’ capabilities and limitations. It takes more than virtuoso equipment to navigate this composer’s keyboard geography; one also needs Olympian stamina, an orchestrally orientated inner ear and the kind of projection and concentration one associates with the best stage actors. How else can one master Schnittke’s three crazy piano sonatas, with their relentless opposition of material, in-your-face dynamic extremes, cinematic transitions and unpredictable juxtapositions of baby-simple lines and textural avalanches? Or ensure sustaining power and momentum in the early, serial Prelude & Fugue and Improvisation & Fugue? Even simple children’s fare like the unpublished Sonatina for piano duet or the eight Little Piano Pieces are spiced with deliberately weird chords and plot twists that should not catch an interpreter unawares, and ditto Schnittke’s Mozart concerto cadenzas.

Fortunately Simon Smith has the technical wherewithal and serious musicianship that enable him to convey seemingly intractable passages with narrative cogency, such as the pulverising climax of clusters in the Second Sonata’s Allegro moderato, or the Variation on a Chord’s machine-gun-like overlapping repeated notes in different registers. Note too his haunting legato in the First and Third Sonatas’ Lento movements, although superior engineering underlines Igor Tchetuev’s more transluscent, shimmering touch in a now out-of-print Caro Mitis release that would otherwise be my first choice for the sonatas (4/09). That takes nothing away from Smith’s formidable achievement in what appears to be the first complete recording of the composer’s piano works. His thoroughly researched annotations add further value to an important release.