Between them, Menahem Pressler and Antonio Meneses offer us a rare listening privilege, with playing that is at once intimate, conversational, reposeful, intelligent and, above all, simple in its musical intentions, which are, or seem to be, to present the music without excessive interpretative intervention. Not that these are in any way bland performances: Pressler may now be a venerable 84 but his wisdom isn’t at a high premium, either mentally or physically: both his mind and to a large extent his fingers are still remarkably agile. Maybe the call to arms at 2'25" into the first movement of the Third Sonata, Op 69, sounds less forceful than on some rival versions, but it certainly doesn’t drag and the crucial virtue is concentration: throughout this set both players hold the line without letting it flag and although moments of rapt intensity are far too plentiful to catalogue in detail I must just mention one or two.

The first captures the whispered exchanges towards the close of that same movement (at around 11'33"), the utterly bewitching way Pressler leads us into the coda, tracing every harmonic turn with the subtlest shift of dynamic and tempo. Meneses is balanced fairly close to the microphones, a palpable advantage given that his bowing is so seamless, his tone warm and mellow. Another high-point is the Adagio of the last sonata, Op 102 No 2, significantly qualified by Beethoven as con molto sentimento d’affetto, perfectly realised here in its aching expressiveness and the way both players maintain a vital sense of pulse.

The outer movements of both Op 102 sonatas achieve clarity without clatter (some pianists force an excessively hard tone here) but if you fancy a prime sampling of Meneses/Pressler magic, then I would advise beaming up around 6'23" into the Conqu’ring Hero Variations, starting with the chorale-like piano variation then picking up the tempo before relaxing again for some slow-breathing dialogue. There’s nothing sensational about it, no showing off or theatrical arching of eyebrows, just the joy of hearing two seasoned players getting it absolutely right. As I said before, a rare privilege, and a credible, gently stated alternative to the more forthright sets by Perényi and Schiff (ECM, 12/04), and Maisky and Argerich (DG, 2/95).