Korean-born Sunwook Kim came to prominence in 2006 at the age of 18, when he won the Leeds International Competition. From the concerto finals, which I attended, he was a clear and deserved victor, and a recital I caught a few years later at Manchester University showed that he had the soul and the poetry, as well as the fingers and the temperament, for the big Schubert A major Sonata. Now this first solo CD confirms that he is a force to be reckoned with.

He has chosen two of Beethoven’s big pyrotechnic showpieces; or at least this is the aspect his playing highlights. Textures are phenomenally clear throughout – the octave glissandos in the finale of the Waldstein, for instance, are dispatched with consummate ease – and if anything in the Hammerklavier made Kim sweat, you wouldn’t know it. I intend no backhandedness with such compliments. On the contrary – hats off.

Scrupulous observation of Beethoven’s dynamics is another conspicuous feature – though perhaps a little too conspicuous, since it tends to reinforce what’s on the page without always revealing the impulse that lies behind it. Add to that Kim’s rather merciless fortissimo and you have small but sure signs of a not yet fully mature artist. Much of his forte playing you would think was marked fortissimo, while his fortissimo and sforzando have a tendency to explode like cannon-fire. Either side of the recapitulation in the Waldstein’s first movement (from around 6'10" to 6'30") the high Fs – the top note on Beethoven’s instrument at the time– are noticeably out of tune, and this, too, Kim seems determined we should register. Then, after a nicely evocative opening, with Beethoven’s pedal markings scrupulously observed, the main theme of the finale is well and truly nailed to the floor, as if in the unlikely event that we might somehow miss its revelation. At one level the Waldstein Sonata is a fine example of how much Beethoven’s piano exercises influenced the textures and even the substance of his compositions. But I’m not sure I want a pianist to highlight this fact. A contra-bass D flat at 4'40" and a corresponding C for the final triadic celebration – neither of them available to Beethoven at the time, though they would be 12 years later for the Hammerklavier – add a touch of egregious Lisztian attention-grabbing.

The outer movements of the Hammerklavier are mightily impressive by any standard, and if the slow movement feels unusually swift at quaver=80-84, that is still a couple of notches below Beethoven’s own marking. Nor could it really be said that Kim is insensitive to its extraordinary harmonic shifts. The problem is his uncertainty when the arena is spiritual rather than physical, with the result that there is no sense of floating or mystery, and at the climax he once again pushes the tone past the legitimately clamorous to the blatantly clangorous. It’s as though the music is somehow being strangled, rather allowed to radiate its glory.

The glassy piano tone is clearly not something Kim alone should take the blame for, and the same obviously goes for the tuning. Accentus’s booklet essay is respectable in content but appears to have been typeset by someone who doesn’t know what a paragraph break is supposed to look like.