Alfred Brendel’s journey through the Mozart sonatas and solo pieces is set fair to give us a rich series. He is not the first distinguished Mozartian to have embarked on a thoroughgoing exploration of the solo sonatas comparatively late in his career and to have found there a greater range than he had discovered hitherto. Last June, at the time of his 70th birthday, he told Gramophone that he hoped to go through all the later sonatas in the next two or three years and then maybe add the early ones.

The F major Sonata, K332, he had never played before; it was misdated by Köchel (five years too early) and perhaps as a result of that it has been underestimated by many pianists. It is mature Mozart, and when presented with Brendel’s freshness of perception you wonder how its stature could ever have been overlooked: in his words, it’s ‘one of the instrumental pieces in which you see that Mozart is a composer for the stage – that he knows many characters; that he observed people – because one character is following the other, and in the exposition of the first movement you have seven or eight of them in succession which should be clearly defined; also in terms of sound, of orchestration.’ As they pass before us here, the personages in this miniature drama are integrated into a beautifully judged continuity and play of light and shade.

The slow movements in all three sonatas are special. In that of K332, which is already ornate, you notice the enhancement of intensity that comes with the decoration Mozart himself added to its second part. So it does in the adagio of the C minor Sonata, K457, where, at its last return, Mozart reshapes the main theme for expressive effect, and at that point Brendel accepts the challenge, as a great singer would, to produce magic. He uses a big range of dynamics and colour throughout this Sonata, and the rhythmic control which supports his quite free handling of line and rubato and dramatic pauses is a wonder to behold. There is spontaneity of feeling too, without which a Mozart player cannot attain the heights, and in the finales of the two earlier pieces a sparkle in the fingers that makes evident his delight in them. He relishes in particular the finale of the B flat Sonata, K333, where Mozart conjures up an orchestra and a full-scale concerto movement, complete with cadenza, under the solo pianist’s hands.

The acoustic at The Maltings, Snape seems glorious for the sweep and Beethovenian force of gesture of the C minor Sonata, contributing to the impression of music unconfined by the instrument and alive in the air around it. The other recordings were done at Glyndebourne and are very good too, but drier. The intimacy there is just right for the Adagio in B minor, K540, a piece which Brendel has called ‘passion music as interior monologue’. Sample him in this, if you will, for an immediate revelation of his achievement here as a Mozart interpreter of the highest class. Then forget about him and go straight to the heart of the matter.