Cédric Pescia, winner of the Gina Bachauer competition, has previously set his recording sights high with the Goldberg Variations. Now he turns his attention to Beethoven’s final triumvirate. His interpretations seem to come from a slightly later style, however. In the finale of Op 109, for instance, the quiet nobility of Beethoven’s variation theme – oh what a nightmare that is to voice – has a certain choppiness due to an excess of rubato, which disturbs the underlying pulse (such a key feature as the variations intensify). Much of the expression in these works comes out of a minute observation of the score, never more so than in the finale of Op 110. In its extraordinary recitative for the right hand, including that grief-stricken passage on a single note – not used to such emotive effect again until Chopin in his 15th Prelude – Pescia’s overstated emoting cheapens the effect of a tragedy-laden torpor.

Of course this is some of the most challenging music in the piano repertoire, but it seems to me that Pescia isn’t yet sure of what he wants to do with the music. It’s as if he isn’t content to let Beethoven’s often very simple building materials – the opening diminished seventh of Op 111 being a case in point – and their subsequent intricate development, stand on their own. As a result, he underplays the drama of Beethoven’s raw juxtapositions of contrasting ideas – taming the outlandish middle movement of Op 110.

When comparing Pescia with the masterly and utterly empathetic readings of Goode, Lewis and Schnabel (to take but three), his shortcomings, sadly, become still more evident.