Benjamin Hochman stands out for both the acuity of his programming and the refinement of his interpretations. This typically thoughtful recital exhibits both qualities. Its underlying premise is that ‘framing Beethoven with very old and very new music gives it surprising resonance’ – and the thematic and gestural links among his chosen works vividly illuminate both Beethoven’s roots in the past and his prescient modernism. As an added bonus, the programme also clarifies the lineage of George Benjamin’s intricately canonic Shadowlines, a work that seems less threatening when heard alongside Beethoven and the Baroque, rather than in its usual company of thorny contemporaries. Including a motet by Josquin shortened and transcribed by high-modernist Charles Wuorinen only further elucidates how musical periods interweave.

This web of connections is especially clear in these scrupulously careful interpretations, which make the most of Hochman’s subtle timbral palette and keen ear for texture. Whether in the elegance of the ornamentation in the Dowland-Byrd, the astute treatment of the rhythmic conflicts in the Prestissimo of Beethoven’s Sonata Op 109, the subtle flow of the last of the Shadowlines or the eloquent polyphonic balances of the Josquin (a performance more finely wrought than Wuorinen’s own – Koch, 7/96), Hochman artfully brings out the aesthetic overlaps among these works. It’s hard to imagine that you won’t feel educated by the recital’s end.

But will you feel exalted? Scrupulous care, after all, is not an unmitigated aesthetic virtue, especially when it comes to Beethoven; and some listeners may well find Hochman’s playing – with its compressed dynamics, its smoothed melodic and dynamic profiles and its weak dramatic shaping – too even-tempered. Artur Schnabel, in his notes for the last movement of the Sonata Op 110, refers to Beethoven’s ‘unrestrained expression’; but a few moments aside (say, the dynamic ending of that sonata’s fugue), risk-taking is not a quality of Hochman’s Beethoven here. Certainly, nothing matches the contrapuntal adventure we hear in Glenn Gould or the concentration we get in Richter. Shadowlines is similarly laid back: the Messiaenic fire in the second section, for instance – marked wild and feroce – is too constrained, especially when held up to the quicksilver version by Gilles Vonsattel (Honens, 2/16).

In sum, while there’s a great deal to savour in this superbly engineered recital, it’s the pianist’s moderation that takes centre stage.