The music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and his treatise on keyboard-playing were essential to Haydn’s musical education, and one hears the influence of the older composer throughout these early keyboard sonatas. Ideas skitter across the page, there are bracing contrasts of texture and mood, and larger structures feel both improvisatory and inevitable at the same time. Using two fortepianos to accentuate contrast and variety of sonority, Tuija Hakkila makes a lively, appealing romp of these diverse and engaging works.

Dating Haydn’s keyboard works is a complicated business but the eight sonatas gathered here likely all date from before the mid-1770s, when the composer was in his early forties. The musical range runs from divertimento-like movements, simple and appealing, to the longer Sturm und Drang sonatas of the 1770s, including the magnificent C minor Sonata (No 20), which receives, unfortunately, a slightly more scattered and unfocused reading than the other works on this two-disc set. For the E major Sonata (No 13), Hakkila uses a period instrument by an unknown maker and it is a revelation. The sound ranges from dry, timpani-like thumpiness to a glassy, almost metallic sheen in the upper register. This range serves the music well, adding a welcome bit of acoustic carnival.

Hakkila is a gifted player, alert to the nuance and quicksilver changes of Haydn’s mercurial style. Nothing is forced but no eccentricity is left behind, either. Her playing is technically accomplished and interpretatively alert, and one hears the steady progress of Haydn’s inventiveness and spirit of adventure throughout the set.