Strange it is that Beethoven’s most lauded movement, the first of Op 27 No 2, marked Adagio sostenuto at two beats to a bar, is subject to a variety of tempi – from crotchet=c49 (Solomon) to c88 (Artur Schnabel, both on EMI). Perhaps a slow speed conjures the atmosphere of ‘Moonlight’, which wasn’t the composer’s sobriquet. He called the work Sonata quasi una fantasia and a faster gait not only gets closer to concept, it also gives the melody coherence. François-Frédéric Guy doesn’t dawdle but hews closer to Solomon than Schnabel, and rather misses the point. Yet in the Presto agitato finale of this sonata, the first on the set, Guy offers a pointer to his breadth of thought and feeling in the 11 works on offer.

Technically, he is in total control. If the close recording captures some breathing, it also captures a pianist of fine mind-body coordination. Guy’s whole being seems to expand into the music and he embodies an emotional involvement through rhythmic flexibility, mostly sonorous tone and a left hand the equal of his right in weight, articulacy and dynamic nuance – qualities that help create an aura of authority in, for example, the first movement of Op 22. A gripping verve surges through this Allegro con brio, the rhetorically stated fortissimo sequences in G minor, C minor and F minor early in the development adding suspense to the whole section. Nor does he miss the wry humour inherent in the Scherzo of Op 14 No 2; or the melancholy of the Largo e mesto of Op 10 No 3. If the darkly rumbling coda begins closer to piano rather than pianissimo as directed, Guy’s distinct bass-line, a graduated swell of sound with fluent mobility across the bars, creates its own tension; and true softness may be heard elsewhere, like the Adagio cantabile of Op 13 and the introduction to Op 27 No 1.

It’s in the slow movements that interpretative gauntlets are met with an individual musical voice; and no more magnificently than in the Largo con gran espressione of Op 7. Guy takes Beethoven’s marking at face value and, at a hypnotically tenacious pulse of crotchet=c35, he builds this movement, immense in spiritual scope, into a profoundly stirring edifice. ‘Not a note cold’, to quote Pablo Casals. And whatever the odd reservation, not a note perfunctory anywhere either.