I’ve said before that I don’t think James Ehnes is capable of making an unmusical sound, and the previous instalments in his Beethoven sonata cycle with Andrew Armstrong were both made Editor’s Choice (5/17, 12/19). ‘The freshness and spontaneity of these interpretations is unfaltering, as is the instantaneous rapport and subtle, crystal-clear tonal beauty of the pair’s playing’, I wrote in December, which leaves me in something of a dilemma when it comes to describing a disc that shares the same qualities in such generous abundance that it’s hard to listen without smiling.

It’s worth saying, though, that these remain chamber performances, captured by Onyx in a realistic but lucid acoustic. Here’s the Spring Sonata, in all its verdant lyricism, and Ehnes and Armstrong never force it. The score’s surprises emerge naturally from the interplay of the two performers, with Armstrong’s sudden forte chords serving as a springboard for Ehnes’s naturally buoyant phrasing. Ehnes and Armstrong set it between the stormiest of the earlier sonatas (the Spring’s troublesome twin sister) Op 23, and the most playful, the G major, Op 30 No 3, delivered here with Haydnesque audacity and glee. Two miniatures prepare the mood-change, both played with audible joy.

And it’s also fair to say that I don’t think Armstrong is capable of making an unmusical sound, either. He draws mystery around him like a cloak in the quieter passages of Op 30 No 3, and in the Spring Sonata his ornamentation glints like raindrops caught in the sunlight. The fact that two artists of such extraordinary technical skill can demonstrate their whole range without straining the intimate spirit of the duo-sonata medium is just another miracle of this captivating cycle.