Schubert: Sonata in C Minor, D. 958, 4 Impromptus, D. 935 & Rondo, D. 951

Aimi Kobayashi was a prize-winner at the 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition, and for her fifth Warner Classics album switches attention to works from late in Schubert’s life. The centrepiece is Kobayashi’s gripping account of Piano Sonata No. 19 in C Minor, where the chiselled accents launching the opening movement are a compelling call to attention. Kobayashi describes Schubert’s music as “lonely, but full of tenderness”, and both feelings infuse her sentient response to the sonata’s slow movement. Occasional darts of anger shoot out, too, and these surface more completely in the sonata’s turbulent finale, where Kobayashi’s super-clear technique reveals a telling amount of nuanced detail. She is also totally at home in the seemingly more relaxed world of the Impromptus (D. 935), where the poise and poetry of her playing make for absorbing listening. Kobayashi’s husband Kyohei Sorita joins her for a charming duet encore, Schubert’s lilting Rondo in A Major.