English pianist Paul Lewis is renowned for his performances of central European classical repertoire, in particular the piano sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert. On this recording, Lewis stays in the early 19th century but sharpens his focus to zoom in on two sonatas written within approximately a year of one another by Carl Maria von Weber and Franz Schubert.

Weber’s four-movement Piano Sonata No 2 was composed in 1816 and is an elegantly structured, lyrical and at times tempestuous work that seems not to have troubled the repertoire choices of many top-tier pianists in recent memory (Garrick Ohlsson, a notable exception). Lewis’s fresh, thoughtful recording is welcome, especially contextualised with Schubert’s B Major Piano Sonata No...