Bath's annual Mozartfest is by no means confined to Wolfgang Amadeus, rather the programming serves to illustrate his place in the great scheme of things classical. In Stephen Kovacevich's sonata recital, the opening work by Mozart - the early E flat sonata, K 282 - was one few pianists would have considered, since it relates as much to pre-classical Italian keyboard sonatas as it does to contemporary Haydn. Yet Kovacevich invested the first slow movement with a serenity that underlined the innate genius of the rebellious teenage Mozart. He also pointed up the passages of chromatic colour and brief incursions in the minor mode that become characteristic of vintage Mozart and, significantly here, to Schubert.

The jump forward four decades to late Beethoven and the Sonata Op 101 in A major was smoothly negotiated, with Kovacevich describing wide arcs of melody with an elegant line that belied the economy of Beethoven's means. While the adagio encapsulated the intense emotion at the heart of this work, it was the Bachian splendour that Kovacevich brought to both the march and the elaborate finale that was most forceful.

Kovacevich, for whom a lucid clarity has always been paramount in the classical repertoire, seems increasingly intent on exploring more Romantic sonorities, perhaps taking the cue from Beethoven's own instructions for the use of the sustaining pedal. In Schubert's Sonata in B flat D 960, he built up layers of sound with overtones adding to the rich resonance, from which phrases would emerge with disarming freshness and spontaneity. Thus, it was less motivic development that permeated the consciousness than tonalities in Schubert's vast edifice, as in the C sharp minor of the development section, which presages the heart-rending central andante, and later in the dramatic episodes of the allegro finale. Any slightly fudged moments were more than compensated for by the ever-questing Kovacevich musical intellect.