Classical CD: Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Op 109, 110 & 111

Uchida has been a front-rank pianist for more than 30 years now, and an established recording artist for almost as long, but, extraordinarily, this is her first disc devoted to Beethoven sonatas.

That she should start with the last three sonatas is entirely typical though, for their rarefied world should find a perfect match in her pianistic mixture of poetry and rigour. The results here, however, are not quite what one might have expected.

Her account of the C minor Op 111 is scarifyingly direct, charting an absolutely unswerving course from the bold dramatic confrontations of the first movement to the increasing transcendence of the final variations. But those of the preceding two sonatas are less immediately involving.

The opening of Op 109 is unexpectedly prosaic, and if the first movement of Op 110 has the right kind of gravitas, it doesn't unfold with quite the inevitability one expects.

In each case the sonata gains in expressive power as it goes on, so that ultimately each becomes a convincing Beethovenian journey; it's just their starting points that disconcert.