Composers: Beethoven
Compositions: Piano Sonatas Opp. 109, 110, 111
Performers: Steven Osborne p
Catalogue Number: HYPERION CDA68219

If anything sets my heart racing, it’s a new recording of Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas by a pianist I hold in high regard. Steven Osborne’s most recent Beethoven foray found him triumphantly wrestling the Hammerklavier into submission; chronologically and harmonically, this trio is a logical next step.

All three sonatas date from the early 1820s when Beethoven’s hearing had long since departed and his health was in chronic decline – taking ‘the cure’ in the spa town of Baden in 1821, he...