The image of heavyweight composer and patriarchal guardian of a decaying romantic tradition makes it easy to forget that Brahms started out as a virtuoso concert pianist. It is equally easy to forget that his third and final sonata, for his own instrument, was completed at the ridiculously precocious age of 20 (during a sojourn with his new friends Robert and Clara Schumann). From then on it was as if he had said all that he wanted to say in the genre, and his large scale piano compositions were henceforth confined to sets of variations – those on themes of Paganini and Handel being the most substantial.

For his ambitious (and auspicious) debut on the BIS label, the British pianist Jonathan Plowright exhibits a prodigious musical appetite, tackling the meaty Third Sonata for his main course with the Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel making for a rich and sumptuous dessert.

The sonata again confounds any expectations you might have of Brahms as a structural conservative, being cast in no less than five contrasting movements, linked with a recognisably Beethovian thematic motto. It receives a carefully considered yet intensely dramatised reading, more tempestuous in approach than, say Radu Lupu,...