Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp 13, 27 no 2, 53 & 79

Steven Osborne's first foray into Beethoven on disc is also his first recording of genuinely mainstream classical repertory. It confirms that the qualities he has brought to a wide range of later works, from Liszt to Messiaen, transfer perfectly to some of the best known of all piano sonatas. Osborne plays the Moonlight, Pathétique and Waldstein sonatas here, together with the little G major work, Op 79, and even in such well traversed musical territory he regularly finds something new and interesting to say. There's nothing self-consciously quirky in his playing, but he does have that very special ability to make music that you thought you knew inside out seem fresh and totally alive. The way he keeps the first two movements of the Moonlight sonata on the tightest of reins, for instance, before allowing it to explode in the tumultuous finale, or how he gradually turns up the intensity of the finale of the Waldstein from the gentlest of beginnings, are both perfectly stage-managed, the product of a musical mind that knows exactly what it wants interpretatively, and how to achieve it.