When it comes to Beethoven’s complete survey of piano sonatas on disc, EMI appears to take risks. After all, they launched Schnabel’s pioneering cycle in the 1930s and placed bets on behalf of a young, promising pianist named Daniel Barenboim with his first Beethoven cycle in the late ’60s.

Fast-forward nearly a half-century later to EMI’s latest contract player, 24-year-old Korean HJ Lim, whose own Beethoven cycle will appear this year starting with this double-disc release. Judging from the cycle’s first instalment, Lim herself is something of a risk-taker. In general, she favours fast tempi and textures that are clear and taut to the point of being overly dry. At the same time, she sometimes employs ‘old school’ devices like rolling chords and breaking hands that critics accept more from dead pianists than living ones, although the purity of the string quartet-like textures in the Allegretto of the Moonlight Sonata falls by the wayside as a result.

Lim likes to pull unexpected rubatos and hard-hitting accents out of the proverbial hat, toeing that fine line between expressive and mannered. For example, there’s her overly coy phrasing of the main theme of Op 22’s Rondo: Allegretto, yet the pianist’s rhythmic liberties enhance the whimsy characterising the scampering upward scales and dramatic silences of Op 14 No 2’s Scherzo assai. The Les adieux Sonata’s outer movements boast tremendous sweep and brio, yet every once in a while an elongated cadence or exaggerated accompanimental figure draws more attention to Lim than to Beethoven. Conversely, the expanding and contracting phrases of Op 14 No 1’s Allegretto befit an underlying passion and intensity that many pianists otherwise flatten out. Lim possesses the finger power to carry out Beethoven’s optimistically fast metronome markings in the Hammerklavier Sonata and the brainpower to make them sound plausible, if not necessarily pleasing. For example, the Adagio sostenuto’s long, intricately wrought right-hand cantabiles barely have room to breathe. By contrast, Lim begins the finale’s fugue with breathless lightness, yet her basic tempo gradually slows down as the movement unfolds. However, the comparably note-gobbling finales of the two Op 27 sonatas prove more consistently brisk, supple and even jazzy in their demeanour. Lim’s long-lined concentration and superb legato control in Op 7’s slow movement show that she can play simply and directly when she chooses. However one responds to these often exciting though sometimes wrong-headed performances, there’s no doubting Lim’s strong personality and fervent commitment.