With the canonical 32 sonatas behind him and the variations, dances and bagatelles up ahead, Ronald Brautigam devotes the ninth volume of his projected complete Beethoven piano music survey to the composer’s early and unpublished sonatas and sonatinas. Happily, Brautigam brings these works to life by lavishing on them the same care and engaged musicality that have distinguished his cycle’s finest performances to date.

In all three WoO47 sonatas Brautigam plays up the teenage composer’s budding proclivity for sudden dynamic contrasts and comic timing, while enlivening the slow movements with operatically inflected phrasing. Notice, too, the witty pointing and insidiously integrated tempi for the Third Sonata’s central variations, and how the Scherzando finale’s quick runs take shape moving over the bar-lines. Those who think of the two Sonatinas as lightweight fare may be surprised (and hopefully convinced) by Brautigam’s measured, serious-minded interpretations. The fortepianist similarly probes the two-movement “Leichte Sonata” (originally conceived for the Orphika, a relative of the clavichord), exploiting his instrument’s timbral diversity to heartfelt effect. This may be minor Beethoven, yet Brautigam’s interpretations are never less than major, and sumptuously engineered, too.