Maurizio Pollini’s unfolding Beethoven sonata cycle continues with the infinitely varied Opp 10 and 13 Sonatas, compelling you to wonder anew at Beethoven the pioneer. Launching the early C minor Sonata with a shot-from-guns virtuosity, he makes you more than aware of new athletic challenges and horizons. Yet such nervous intensity, like electricity passing from pylon to pylon, by the same token creates limitations rather than virtues.

Even in the more genial F major Sonata Pollini admonishes rather than coaxes or tempts. Everything is rushed and monochrome, the finale’s mischievous wit and caprice wilting under such a determined assault. The D major Sonata’s opening Presto is, once more, a breathless chase of events that leaves too little time for the sort of eloquence that can make say, Schnabel or Kempff (or, more recently, Anderszewski) such acute Beethoven players. The Menuetto is rushed and ill-tempered while the Pathétique’s opening (for Marian Scott, music of Beethoven’s ‘Romeo and Juliet period’) has its dark eloquence pushed aside as if of scant poetic interest. Even in the slow movement Pollini can be authoritarian, barking his orders at you with inflexible resolve.

For many, such rigour represents an integrity or moral purity that are truly Beethovenian, but it could hardly be thought exploratory or inclusive. Finely recorded, these performances are strictly for Pollini’s countless admirers; for richer and more humane virtues others will look elsewhere.