Somehow it was a while since I had heard the Op 119 Bagatelles, and I’m grateful to Imogen Cooper for reminding me what treasures they have to offer, sometimes at moments towards the ends of pieces when you least expect them. It takes real artistry to apply such subtle variations of expressive pressure from phrase to phrase as Cooper delights in. Every detail here is patiently appreciated and gracefully addressed: neither self-regardingly spelt out nor diminishing pieces to the status of a mere appetiser.

Of course, the Diabelli Variations are still the main event, and here the demands are of a different order. The determined yet musically inflected Theme promises much. But the placing of its final cadence and the deliberate non-attacca into Variation 1 already seems to be making a point. Is Cooper deliberately going against the ‘normal’ modern way of dramatising the set, which stresses drive and continuity across groups of variations, in order to suggest a quasi-symphonic overall design? Is she suspicious of the tendency to cast the work in super-human terms? Certainly she is as responsive to Beethoven’s markings as she is in the Bagatelles, and as fleet-flooted as she needs to be in the presto variations (Nos 10, 15 and 19). But she does tend to shy away, it seems to me, from some of Beethoven’s wilder flights of fancy. Her tempo is unstable and her dotted rhythms curiously un-incisive in the eruptively comedic Var 13, for instance, while Var 15 is hardly sempre pp (by contrast, Var 16 is so much harsher than the designated single forte as to distort the tuning). And yet there are so many wonderful things in Cooper’s handling of the final variations that the abiding impression is of a high intelligence guiding the overall journey.

Not quite a top-drawer version, then, but only because that drawer is already so generously filled. Chandos’s recorded sound has a natural glow without ever compromising clarity. Authoritative booklet notes too (William Drabkin).