Schubert’s last few months were constantly plagued by syphilitic fits of giddiness, almost certainly the result of some ill-advised liaison some years beforehand. Despite this he hits just kept on coming, and included his Ninth Symphony (“Great”), his String Quintet and his final three piano sonatas. The B flat is the last of all Schubert’s sonatas, and it is an unfanthomable achievement by a mere 31-year-old, from whom life was literally slipping away. Whereas some virtuosos choose to envelop the sonata in a haze of dreamy nostalgia, Oleg Marshev pays it as a valedictory statement in the Beethoven mould to often startling effect- frequently ravaged by searing emotions. Revisionist and compelling