As befits a super-virtuoso, Marc-André Hamelin has centred his first Beethoven sonata recording on the cycle’s greatest challenge. But it should be no surprise that he skirts the sensational. After all, he typically prefers to illuminate rather than to overwhelm – and here, as usual, he deflects our attention from his unparalleled fingerwork and directs it instead to the details of the music. As usual, too, he does so without privileging accuracy over personality. True, Hamelin characteristically shuns eccentricity, and there’s nothing here to match Gieseking’s hyperkinetic dash (IDIS) or Michael Korstick’s protracted rumination (Oehms). But Hamelin’s Hammerklavier is far from neutral: you’ve never heard it the way you do here – nor have you heard as much of it as you do in this performance. Simply put, Hamelin uses rhythmic resilience (listen to the snap of the dotted figures in the Scherzo), subtly varied articulation and artfully judged voicing to bring everything sharply into focus. But he does so without Schnabel’s strain (note Hamelin’s facility in the treacherous innervoice trills) and without Pollini’s severity (DG), offering instead a freshness that few can summon in such familiar music. Combine that focus with his unfailing sense of rhetoric, and what emerges is a remarkable synthesis of eventfulness and coherence. What also emerges is an invigorating resistance to monumentality. The performance is on the slow side. But even in the Adagio, so often mined for profundity, Hamelin offers repose more than intensity, regret more than despair. And in the fugal finale, Hamelin, supported by his ability to give each line its own inflection, provides as deft a reading as you can imagine. The Hammerklavier is coupled with early Beethoven. The C major Sonata, Op 2 No 3, is dedicated to Haydn; and Hamelin – perhaps our most vibrant living exponent of Haydn’s sonatas – tosses it off it with lucidity, rhythmic kick and sparkling humour. Except for his decision to skip the first-movement repeat, it’s close to ideal. A major release.