English pianist Paul Lewis is renowned for his performances of central European classical repertoire, and his acclaimed recordings of the complete cycles of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos and Sonatas have received multiple international awards. He is currently in the midst of his third visit to Australia as a soloist, presenting a programme of short Brahms pieces bookended by two late Beethoven sonatas.

Both sonatas were written in the early 1820s, when Beethoven was completely deaf, seriously ill, and considered something of a down-and-out has-been in Vienna. All this contributed to the increasingly experimental sound world of the late sonatas, which Lewis navigated with mastery, noting that “all the pieces in tonight’s program end softly – they all somehow find silence.” His reading of the No 30, Op. 109 sonata was characterised by restraint and glorious lyrical legato in the first two movements, building to a speeding, explosive final movement.

This was followed by Four Ballades, Op. 10 from a young Brahms, written when he had not long moved in with the Schumanns and was beginning to negotiate the ensuing emotional turbulence. The Three Intermezzi, Op. 117 from nearly forty years later displayed a more complex, introspective anguish, with Brahms describing them as “lullabies...