Though he never enjoyed the kind of international performing career that Rachmaninov and Prokofiev had, Shostakovich was still a considerable pianist, good enough to reach the final of the first Chopin competition held in Warsaw in 1927. Yet his own piano music has never really attracted the same level of interest as his orchestral works and string quartets; selections of his preludes and fugues sometimes turn up in recital programmes, but the two piano sonatas are rarely heard.

Framed by Tchaikovsky's flashy Dumka and six of Rachmaninov's preludes, the two sonatas were the main feature of the recital. Donohoe played the sonatas in reverse order, so that the bigger-boned, more conventional Second took up most of his first half. Composed in 1943 just before the Eighth Symphony, it is a strangely charmless piece, full of pawky counterpoint and unadorned angular lines that provide a reminder of the importance of Hindemith as a formative influence on Shostakovich's music.

Whether an outstanding interpreter such as Sviatoslav Richter or Emil Gilels ever gave the piece more character I don't know, but though he was more than a match for most of its technical challenges, Donohoe didn't really impose himself upon the sonata in a sit-up-and-take-notice way. He was far more convincing in the compressed and dissonant First Sonata from 1927, written when Shostakovich was still an enfant terrible. Its three movements play continuously and get progressively shorter, so that the tension is steadily ratchetted up; Donohoe negotiated its fistfuls of notes with real excitement, as if this was really a piece in which he believed.