The centenary of the birth of Sviatoslav Richter, the supreme pianist of the second half of the 20th century, falls next March. His legacy on disc is already prodigious – though Richter became increasingly reluctant to perform in a studio, a high proportion of his recitals in his last three decades were recorded, and many of those have been already been released and rereleased on a wide variety of labels. But Melodiya begins what promises to be a lavish birthday celebration with a collection of Schubert performances – three discs devoted to sonatas, one to smaller pieces, all of which have not apparently appeared before – taken from recitals in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in 1971, 1978 and 1979.

Though not all of the material is quite as new to disc as claimed – the 1978 account of the G major Sonata D894, for instance, was issued as part of a Brilliant Classics compilation – it is still a wonderful, sometimes magical set, with very decent analogue sound and only occasional audience noise. Schubert was always a central part of Richter's repertory, and where with other composers he was sometimes curiously partial – he avoided Beethoven's Waldstein and Moonlight sonatas, as well as Chopin's Second sonata – with Schubert he was much more inclusive; the late, great A major sonata was the only significant work he didn't play. There are seven of the sonatas here, including two versions of the E minor D566, one with three movements, one with four. The emphasis is on those early sonatas; as well as the composite E minor work, we get the B major D575, F minor D625 and A major D664, together with two of the later ones: the G major and the C minor D958.

Richter's approach to late Schubert was famously expansive. He takes 25 minutes over the first movement of the G major sonata here, turning it into an unworldly meditation in which time seems suspended, and in which the sheer beauty of his sound is all that sustains it – though by contrast, his performance of the C minor is much less weighty and fraught than might be expected. The disc of miniatures, which includes three of the impromptus and three of the Moments musicaux, is a delight too; Richter's genius could find musical truth and beauty on the smallest as well as the largest scale.