Having made the definitive survey of Schubert’s music for solo piano, Mitsuko Uchida has turned to Beethoven. Her structural, harmonic and lyrical understanding is ideal for the great revolutionary, and her recording of the Opus 109,110 and 111 Sonatas is so illuminating that it is like hearing them for the first time. Matchless pianism, tastefully stretched tempi, rapt fugato voices and crystalline articulation abound. The stamina of Uchida’s imagination is what makes this recording inimitable – the Arietta of the C minor Sonata is almost symphonic in its dynamic range.