Fresh from his survey of Mozart, fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout turns his attention to Haydn, giving us three sonatas (the early partita is a sonata by another name) and two sets of variations in this beautiful recording. Lovers of Geoffrey Lancaster’s homegrown project on Tall Poppies will find the South African’s outing with Harmonia Mundi quite different. He gives us exquisitely polished performances and microphone placement is more spacious, less in your ear than with Lancaster’s sets.

Bezuidenhout plays a modern instrument based on an 1805 Anton Walter original and it certainly sounds more elegant, if less cheery, than the Walter copy – also by Paul McNulty – that Lancaster uses on some recordings. Like Lancaster, Bezuidenhout...