Stephen Kovacevich’s EMI recordings of Beethoven’s last two sonatas (2/04) were marked by their breadth, colour, and improvisatory spirit. These similarly conceived live performances from the 2004 piano festival at La Roque d’Anthéron were specifically filmed for home video and, if anything, impress even more.

For starters, his tone acquires greater heft, sustaining power and colour, thanks in part to the richly detailed 5.1 surround-sound. To be sure, sudden fortes and accents still retain a lean, hard-hitting quality entirely in keeping with the jagged inner rhythms of Op 110’s Scherzo and the scurrying passagework in Op 111’s first movement. At the same time, Op 110’s long, lyrical stretches and fugal climaxes have more room to breathe and sing, while the chains of trills in Op 111’s Arietta seem to resonate on their own volition, as if Kovacevich was letting the piano play itself.

His face appears to move in parallel lines to the music, as he keeps his arms and hands relatively close to the keyboard, negotiating leaps, cross-handed passages, and thicker polyphonic stretches with the utmost in physical economy. Indeed, purists who risk playing Op 111’s opening measure with one hand as Beethoven indicates may notice that Kovacevich goes for the easier, less chancy two-handed option.

Director Andy Sommer’s visual style imaginatively yet unobtrusively cross-cuts between facial and/or finger close-ups and wider-angle shots. The intimate ambience and enthusiastic audience response inspire a handful of relaxed Beethoven Bagatelles and Schubert Ländler for encores.