Federico Colli closed his Southbank debut recital with Schumann's Sonata No 1 in F sharp minor, a work haunted by the imaginary figures of Florestan and Eusebius, whom Schumann summoned in his critical work as well as his music, to convey the differing, even contradictory sides of his own temperament.

Florestan is the gregarious extrovert, Eusebius the introverted dreamer, and by the end of the evening, I couldn't help but wonder whether Colli thrives on the same contradictions. Dressed to kill in a shiny suit with an emerald-green cravat, he nevertheless sidled on to the platform with immense shyness. Since he won the Leeds Piano Competition in 2012, he's become a bit of a star. But he responded to the standing ovation that greeted his recital with surprise and genuine bewilderment.

Schumann's big, rarely played sonata suited the mixture of flamboyance and lyricism that characterises his playing, and Colli revealed its neglect to be unjustified. After the moody irresolution of the introduction, with its see-sawing melodic figurations, he launched the first movement's allegro with tangible glee, and negotiated the subsequent swerves between bravado and introspection, typical of the work as a whole, with wonderful subtlety. The slow movement – one of the most beautiful things in Schumann's output, surely – was moody, rapt and gloriously poetic.

Its companion pieces were Mozart's Sonata No 5 in G major, K283 and Beethoven's Appassionata. Colli's Mozart is very direct and admirably free from frills and preciosity; the finale was tremendous in its elan and wit. The Appassionata, meanwhile, was a thing of self-conscious extremes that blended extraordinary stillness – the central andante was breathtaking – with ferocious turbulence. The single encore, dispatched with an impish smile, was a transcription of The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.