“So, why am I throwing myself into Beethoven, whose music, more than any other, demands both laser-like focus and total abandon? Why drive myself crazy in this particular way?”

Why indeed record the Beethoven sonatas again? Young American pianist Jonathan Biss is close to completing his nine-year, nine-disc project. Undaunted by his predecessors, and enterprising and eloquent, he was the first classical musician to publish a Kindle single as he embarked on the cycle in 2011, a meditation on playing these oft-performed scores called Beethoven’s Shadow.

In Volume 7, he shapes his program around one of the late sonatas, The Tempest, the best-known of the Op 31 set, opening with...