Amid the veritable blizzard of Beethoven recordings that has already begun in anticipation of the 250th anniversary of his birth next year, one project of nine years’ duration has culminated. This past June at the Academy of Arts and Letters in upper Manhattan, under the attentive ear and watchful eye of David Frost, one of America’s most distinguished record producers, Jonathan Biss recorded the ninth and final volume of his take on the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas.

The first thing to grab you about this release is the selection of sonatas. There’s 27-year-old Beethoven, fully conscious and confident of his gifts, pushing the envelope in every direction. Then, just five years later, the master at the top of his game, able to suggest posing a question, pondering it, and walking away with a shrug of the shoulders in the first 14 seconds of a piece, and throwing in for good measure a Scherzo so perfect as to be equalled but not surpassed by the one in the Ninth Symphony. Finally, two decades on, Beethoven’s final say in the form that was for him both fecund and personal, coming from an isolating state of deafness that stimulated an exploration of spiritual regions that, two centuries later, continues to inspire awe.

Listening, you’re struck by Biss’s emotional intelligence, his wit, shrewd judgement and open-hearted communicativeness. No sound, no gesture seems greater than what is absolutely necessary to convey Beethoven’s message, naked and unadorned.

The opening Presto of the D major Sonata (No 7) is sun-drenched, every gesture bent toward the ebullient portrayal of joyful energy in sound. There’s no preparation for the Largo e mesto, as though a seasoned tragedian has assumed the stage to deliver a discourse so gripping that its eloquence precludes tears. After this traversal of the abyss, it seems almost astonishing that a Minuet should be given the task of applying a cool cloth to the forehead. The Rondo opens even wider paths toward the light, singing of rebirth and renewal.

Biss’s E flat Sonata (No 18) is funny without being coy. The extended runs of the first movement, on which so much of the drollery depends, are delivered with a straight face, while the jocundly boisterous Scherzo remains proportionate, if not, strictly speaking, polite. The finale leaves you wondering why no choreographer has taken up the work.

It’s difficult to pin down precisely all the elements that contribute to making Biss’s Op 111 so powerful. The implacable seriousness of the first movement is achieved more through its portrayal of perplexing conundrum than any evocation of brutal force. Biss’s habitation of every note in the Arietta creates the sense of a journey in the higher regions; when catharsis is achieved it seems tantamount to a spiritual cleansing, the attainment of a state of grace.

Rarely are hand, mind and heart united as you’ll hear them here. I suspect that, after all is said and done with the anniversary celebrations a year or so from now, these performances will sound as individual and deeply satisfying as they do now.