The venue for this recording (Das Kulturzentrum Grand Hotel, Dobbiaco, Italy), the producer and piano are the same as Angela Hewitt chose for her enchanting disc of Chabrier’s music. None serves her quite as well in Beethoven’s. The drier (sometimes too dry) piano tone to which we are accustomed from Hyperion would have aided clarity, and a less lively instrument than her preferred Fazioli would have minimised the exaggerated gestures in some of these performances.

That said, the great A flat major Sonata (Op 26, the one with the funeral march) and the later E minor Sonata (Op 90) receive emotionally contained, affectionate performances with exemplary attention to the score (I love the cushioned tone and rhythmic bounce Hewitt brings to Variation 2 of Op 26). But in the F major Sonata (Op 10 No 2) and the Moonlight her predilection for fussy little agogic adjustments, far from clarifying phrasing, simply disturbs the natural pulse of the music – 3'30" in the first movement of the Moonlight, for instance, and the caesura she inserts before each return of the first subject in the F major’s skittering finale.

She plays the Allegretto of the Moonlight with a delightful lilt while observing Beethoven’s dynamic requests to the letter, yet is cavalier with them in the finale where sf, f and ff become interchangeable, producing a harsh sforzando tone and a wearisome alternation of very soft and very loud. And why, after the cadential sequence and the (only) two bars of adagio does she not return to Tempo 1 as marked but instead accelerate over four bars? The pianist’s own engaging annotations accompany this frustrating release.