After elongating the opening bars of the Grave introduction of Chopin’s B flat minor Sonata, Beatrice Rana launches into the Doppio movimento at full force, replete with impulsive dynamic surges and bomb-dropping accents. Granted, she sometimes loses the second subject’s melodic thread in pursuit of inner voices, but what inner voices! The force and fury of the Scherzo’s outer sections contrast with a Trio where the lyrical lines linger to the point of indulgence. Although Rana’s solidly steady pacing throughout most of the Funeral March represents the acme of focus and concentration, her exceptionally spacious reading is better suited to Morton Feldman than to Chopin. She subjects the enigmatic finale to liberal tempo fluctuations and deliberately blurry nuance, as if one were creating a remix based on the Argerich, Pogorelich and Grimaud recordings.

I know of at least three or four pianists besides Rana who made learning Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata a pandemic project. Perhaps her galvanic energy symbolises a sense of joyful release after the lockdown. In any event, her tempo for the opening Allegro comes within spitting distance of Beethoven’s optimistic metronome marking. Her clipped articulation in the fughetta contrasts with the exposition and development sections’ fearless sweep, where one can forgive occasional over-pedalling in the heat of the battle. The sequence of upward broken fifths and sixths in bars 224‑25 finds Rana opting for the ‘inspired misprint’ A sharp that Schnabel, Arrau, Richter and Levit favour, rather than the A natural played by Perahia, Hewitt, Kempff, Brendel and Petri.

Rana’s Scherzo may lack Peter Serkin’s angular edge but she gives the Trio’s climactic upward F major scale a good whacking, and gauges the ending’s repeated notes to perfection. One can say that, too, in regard to her timing of the myriad gestures and canny silences in the fourth movement’s Largo introduction, all of which seamlessly lead into a light-fingered and even jazzy fugal finale, where each contrapuntal peak and valley conveys its own sound world. Yes, Perahia boasts subtler voice-leading, while Arrau still has the best transitions, but you can’t deny Rana’s smoker of a fugue its proverbial ‘propers’. By contrast, the Adagio sostenuto stands out for the eloquence communicated in the pianist’s expressive economy and sense of proportion, where Beethoven’s decorative lines flow of their own volition. As a result, the eruptive climaxes manage to sound both surprising and inevitable at the same time.

Notwithstanding my quibbles, these interpretations hold interest for Rana’s strong personality, her obvious and sincere engagement with these works and her willingness to take risks in pursuit of the music behind the notes. I may not agree with everything Rana does, but I believe her.