“The exploration of Beethoven’s piano works still continues to astonish me,” wrote the Viennese pianist Rudolf Buchbinder in 2014, introducing his book Mein Beethoven: Leben mit dem Meister. “Even pieces that I have performed hundreds of times never lose their freshness to me.” Buchbinder recorded this collection of Beethoven’s complete works for solo piano – which includes a number of rarities – between 1973 and 1981. At its heart, of course, are the sonatas. As Buchbinder has said: “There are, I believe, no more personal statements of a human being than those we find in these 32 piano sonatas, which are also the crowning glory of Beethoven’s oeuvre.”