After a brilliantly alert start to his Beethoven sonata cycle (3/03), Artur Pizarro’s second volume has one blowing more cold than hot. True, Op 109 starts with a natural sense of grace and volatility, an engaging sense of the composer’s improvisatory daring, of rapid shifts from drama to reflection and back again. Pizarro’s second movement, too, is a masterly realisation of Beethoven’s prestissimo marking, and it is only in the sublime third movement variations that serious doubts arise. You may acclaim Pizarro’s naturally flowing Andante (as marked) rather than lugubrious Adagio, but you can hardly admire a touch of complacency at odds with Beethoven’s request for molto espressivo. In Variation 5 he takes an almost casual view of its robust forte poetry and in Variation 6 he is disinclined to reconcile Beethoven’s staccato markings with a request for cantabile.

Much of Op 110, too, sounds as if experienced at second hand, and if there is a fine sense of music almost too desolate for articulation in the Arioso dolente this is countered by a fugue that proceeds on auto-pilot. In the first movement of Op 111 Pizarro offers a voluble but glib alternative to Beethoven’s craggy magnificence: he takes the l’istesso tempo at a pace which relishes its vigour and syncopation but later makes little more than token engagement with the more profound reaches of Beethoven’s imagination (that final ‘drift towards the shores of Paradise’ as Edward Sackville-West once had it).

His way, too, of ignoring the final crescendo to forte before allowing the music to sink to its pianissimo close is symptomatic of a nonchalance bordering on indifference. The pianism is enviably fluent but the musicianship sadly and surprisingly incomplete. For seriousness of another order one must turn to Schnabel, Solomon, Arrau, Brendel or Hess (in Opp 109 and 110) and look forward to recordings from the likes of Perahia, Lupu and Uchida. As on their previous disc in this series, Linn Records capture the light, warm tone of what I suspect is once more a Bluthner instrument.