ARGUABLY the world’s leading expert on the piano music of Debussy, both as player and as editor, Roy Howat divided his recital between his favoured composer and Schubert’s last sonata, D.960 in B flat.

For the uninitiated listener, nine consecutive pieces of Debussy carry a risk of over-similarity. But Howat varied his brief soundscapes with enough subtlety to escape that charge with something to spare.

He is an unfussy player who prefers to get straight to the point.

In his opening gambit, the three Estampes (engravings) of 1903, he found a neat balance in Pagodas between internal melody and upper traceries, switched seamlessly from the Orient to Spain in Grenada Evening, and unleashed creamy roulades for Gardens in the Rain.

The Images Oubliées (1894) were unexpectedly passionate at first, but became luminescent in the variations on a children’s song. The second book of Images (1907) boldly brought back the gamelan’s whole-tone scale; the golden fish emerged with less clarity, until finally glinting at the close.

He took a staccato route into Schubert’s pianistic swansong, hurried rather than spacious, and at odds with the composer’s ‘legato’ marking. But he found real profundity in the slow movement, conjuring a noble chorale from its mid-section. Howat’s lightness of touch throughout the Scherzo was intoxicating.

He had by now abandoned his earlier signposting, so that the finale’s many harmonic surprises were allowed to arrive unheralded. Two months from death, Schubert’s sense of humour still shone bright.