Next year is the Schumann bicentenary, and all-Schumann recitals will doubtless proliferate. It wasn't clear whether Angela Hewitt was getting her tribute in before the rush, or whether she had a deeper purpose in compiling a hefty, technically challenging programme devoted entirely to his music. But here it was, with major works, Davidsbündlertänze and the G Minor Sonata, dominating the two halves, each preceded by something slighter, the Arabesque and Waldscenen.

That's all hardcore Schumann – connoisseurs' Schumann, you might say. But the paradox is that Hewitt never seems a naturally instinctive Schumann interpreter. There was much to admire about her performances, especially their cleanness of texture and pedalling – even in the ferocious finale of the sonata everything was crystalline and poised – but something was always missing.

In the Davidsbündlertänze, perhaps the most complex, psychologically and musically, of all Schumann's great piano cycles, Hewitt's approach was skittish, making the music dart and weave, glitter and gleam. But what it never did was speak naturally; every expressive effect seemed calculated, imposed on the music rather than arising naturally from its shape and direction, as it does with great Schumann players like Radu Lupu and Martha Argerich.

The sonata, in which Schumann's inclination towards fantasy rubs up against the formal constraints of large-scale sonata form, suited her much better. It's technically daunting, but Hewitt hardly turned a hair, and never resorted to over-pedalling to hide any tricky passages. Still, though, the slow movement could have had more room to breathe, and the encore, a stiff account of Träumerei from Kinderzenen, underlined those shortcomings.