Here is a stimulating well-contrasted programme. Each sonata benefits from Angela Hewitt's beautifully clean-cut pianistic commant, in which every score marking is placed within a precisely articulated interpretative overview.

Hewitt comes to the music with expertise honed in the Baroque repertoire, Bach especially. Her Beethoven rarely sounds susceptible to Dionysiac forces, whether passion or fury. For the Apollonian virtues of grace and clarity, though, she is an ideal guide.

this fifth volume, for the most part, offers interpretations characterised by intelligent virtuosity and cultivated artistry...everything comes together for Hewitt in a most inspired Op. 110. It abounds with long-lined breadth, careful dynamic scaling, assiduously worked-out tempo relationships and heartfelt poetry.

Dhe is still probably best known for her Bach. So perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s when Beethoven slips into Bach-style fugues in the final movement of Op 110 that Hewitt sounds most masterful. Elsewhere she is incisive and thoughtful too, even if the two earliest works here, Op 2 no 2 and Op 10 no 1, demand a certain lightness of touch that they don’t quite get.