The Russian pianist Sergej Koudriakov won first prize at the Géza Anda Competition in 2006. This début SACD-recording for audite presents two piano works by Franz Schubert, both of which place great demands on their interpretation. Schubert's D-major Piano Sonata of 1825 (the so-called "Gastein" Sonata, D 850) and the Three Piano Pieces composed in May 1828, the year of his death (D 946), reveal the composer en route to a new form of piano music poised between the traditional Viennese classical sonata and the romantic character piece. Schubert's musical and pianistic solutions to this problem are as fascinating as they are mysterious, especially in the case of the unjustly neglected pieces of D 946, whose psychological density and subtle key relationships place them on a par with his final three piano sonatas.