Pianist Yundi has made recordings over the past dozen years ranging from exciting and incisive (the Chopin Scherzos and the Liszt Sonata for DG) to boringly bland (his EMI Chopin Nocturnes). Fortunately, the three ‘name’ Beethoven sonatas marking Yundi’s return to the DG fold generally find the pianist back on track. In the Pathétique’s first-movement introduction, Yundi’s pronounced dynamic contrasts and stable pulse marked by the tiniest expressive adjustments compel serious listening, and so does the thrust of his broken octaves in the movement’s main section. One or two attention-getting accents in the central minore episode are of no consequence in the steady and sustained Adagio, yet a stronger interpretative voice emerges through Yundi’s lean, headlong and super-clear Rondo.

Yundi sticks to his slow-moving guns, so to speak, in the famous opening Adagio of the Moonlight Sonata but the square-ish phrasing seems comparatively straitjacketed when measured alongside the flowing equanimity of similarly slow versions by Rudolf Serkin and Solomon. Given Yundi’s interesting voice-leadings in the central D flat major section, the Scherzo’s main theme emerges rather uniformly (try Mischa Dichter’s more contrapuntally cogent Philips recording). The finale may not be quite so agitato as in the hands of Steven Kovacevich or Garrick Ohlsson, yet it’s solid and sparkling just the same.

Yundi polishes the motivic components in the first movement of the Appassionata with impressive surface finish, yet somehow fails to link them into a cohesive narrative. He also speeds up the chordal outbursts for effect. But the central Andante con moto variations are judiciously paced, aside from getting too loud too soon in the initial theme. One must acknowledge the pianist’s solid fingerwork and textural clarity, along with little miscalculations such as Yundi’s rushing of the repeated dotted diminished chord at the outset, and a less than adroit accelerando into the coda. The close microphone placement is a tad strident in loud passages but it’s certainly preferable to the aforementioned Chopin Nocturnes’ resonant halo of goo.