Once shamefully neglected, Haydn’s piano sonatas are enjoying a much-needed renaissance on record. After celebrating Marc André-Hamelin’s dazzling and musicianly if occasionally driven two-disc album for Hyperion (5/07) I now come to two diametrically opposed approaches together with a happy medium. For the richly experienced John Lill, Haydn’s music is demonstrably of the highest quality, his quirkiness never toppling into facetiousness and often suggesting darker undercurrents and emotional ambivalence. Most sterling of British pianists, he leaves high-flying virtuosity to others and his impeccable technique and musicianship make a superb case for a choice of works that, significantly, stresses the more speculative side of Haydn’s nature. True, his way with No 49 in E flat could sound stolid to those used to a more alert, bright-eyed approach, yet it could also be thought nobly self-effacing and distinctive. And as if to balance things out Lill concludes with the great and final E flat Sonata, adding warmth, affection and brilliance (in his hands the finale is an effervescent tour de force).

Fazil Say, a Turkish maverick pianist, could hardly be more different, openly rejoicing in every twist and turn of Haydn’s often vertiginous arguments. Choosing a more extrovert programme than Lill, his playing is arguably more ebullient than refined yet it is also exhilaratingly energised and finely attuned to the composer’s volte-face mentality. He cuts a real dash in the Rondo from No 43 and is brilliantly alert to the perky dotted rhythms of No 35’s finale. But he also shows ample expressive intensity in the central Largo e sostenuto of No 37. Both discs sound well (Lill’s more rounded, Say’s more sparkling) and Say includes a charming essay in which he tells us that the essence of Haydn’s music is life itself.

Finally, a two-disc reissue of performances recorded in 1990. Here Michele Boegner, whose playing I recall from many years ago, dots her “i”s and crosses her “t”s to scrupulous effect. Her glistening, indelibly French perle is complemented by a special buoyancy and charm (try the Menuetto from No 27); and although Apex’s sound is cavernous and their presentation rudimentary (there is no biographical information about the artist), these are fine performances admirably devoid of all wilfulness or excess.