Certainly that enthusiasm translates to the keyboard and his account of the A flat major Sonata, HobXVI/46, is alive to the first movement’s twists and turns, its drama and its humour, while the unexpected toccata-like outburst is dispatched with aplomb. And he offers a rapt slow movement, its conversational trills pristine. Yet this throws up an issue: Bagaría’s tendency to vocalise: when the music sighs, so does he (sample tr 8, 6'42"). If that had been an isolated instance, it would have mattered little, but it happens all too frequently; if only his producer had had a quiet word with him.

Two of the sonatas Bagaría selects are classic Sturm und Drang, and his disc ends with the B minor, HobXVI/32 (a key rare in Haydn but which always drew from him what Richard Wigmore has succinctly described as ‘vehement astringency’). Bagaría conveys its drama effectively without ever verging on the aggressive. He handles well the contrast between the sonata’s gentle Minuet and its chewy Trio, though Marc-André Hamelin is particularly imaginative here; and in the tumultuously angular, obsessive finale (with its punishing repeated-note figuration), it’s the Canadian who reigns supreme, daring in tempo yet not losing the drama of the silences. The C minor Sonata, HobXVI/20, is unfortunately particularly afflicted by vocalisation, and in its Andante, I feel Bagaría makes life difficult for himself with a grandly spacious tempo (it is marked con moto). His finale works well, though I’m even more drawn to Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s mercurial account. The piano sound itself is appealing but the vocalising is a distraction.