After her rapturously received Chopin recordings for EMI, Argentinian pianist Ingrid Fliter turns to Beethoven. And, in her grave, minor-key programme of three sonatas, she plays with an unfettered musical quality that takes you back to the great days of Solomon and Clara Haskil.

In the Pathétique Sonata she recreates Beethoven’s “Romeo and Juliet” period – a burgeoning and romantic foretaste of so many great things to come – with the finest senses of both drama and solemnity. Her Adagio cantabile sings with an ease that truly soothes the savage beast and the recitatives in the Tempest Sonata are as poised and mysterious as you could wish. Beethoven’s suggestion that his listeners should read Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a fable of rebirth and reconciliation, may remain an enigma, but it is surely Fliter’s cardinal virtue that she gives you a renewed sense of wonder at the composer’s pioneering strength and eloquence.

In the Appassionata Sonata Fliter is once more unswervingly serious, as true to the spirit as to the letter of the score. How difficult then to add that, as competition winner succeeds competition winner (usually to sink into oblivion after a few years – they are rarely the real McCoy) it is wonderful indeed to encounter a pianist of such exalted yet natural and unforced artistry.

EMI have recorded Fliter in demonstration sound at Potton Hall. Rarely has this label been so lucky in its choice of pianists.