CD: Beethoven: Choral Fantasia / Piano Sonata No 17, etc: Grimaud/ Salonen, et al

Pianist Hélène Grimaud is something of a mystic, and the sleeve notes for her DeutschGrammophon debut album tell us as much about her belief system as they do about the music.

All the works on "this seemingly bizarre disc", as she calls it, embody "the theory of Universalism" - the idea that music marks "a movement towards a point of possible reconciliation of all opposites".

Her fervour finds expression in articulate, visionary performances of Beethoven's "Tempest" Sonata and his Choral Fantasia: the latter, with Esa-Pekka Salonen electrifyingly conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir, has rarely been bettered.

I don't share Grimaud's enthusiasm for the Bach-based convulsions of Arvo Part's Credo, though she makes a wonderful case for John Corigliano's Fantasia on an Ostinato, which takes the slow movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony as the starting point for a hypnotic piano solo that is guaranteed to soothe even the most savage of temperaments.