Volodos, rather like the music, can seem to inhabit a world of his own – removed, remote, yet in steely control of the expression of that remoteness…Volodos is a master of soft and silken tone and has the steadiest of rhythms…There’s a certain sense of ‘rightness’ to the tempos and every note feels weighed in the balance. The disc’s sound quality complements these cushioned subtleties with warmth and clarity.

This is one of those discs where a word count is a strange thing. For it needs only four: Go Buy This Disc...whatever he does, you can’t imagine the music going any other way, which is perhaps the definition of a great artist....Comparisons become irrelevant in interpretations of such mesmerising honesty. An award-winner if ever I heard one.

His playing is wonderfully cultured, full of insight and beautifully precise phrasing, with typically lush tone. His rapt treatment of the Three Intermezzi Op 117, is entrancing, although some may cavil at the rather relaxed tempo for the best known of the set, the first in E-flat major (though he is in good company in this choice). The four intermezzi, ballade and romance that make up the Op 118 set are rendered in as beguiling a fashion. Sony’s sound is superb, too.

thrilling muscularity and introspective lyricism

he is capable of playing of the most exquisite simplicity, spinning lines of lyrical purity.