With a discography of well over 100 albums, this release marks Marc-André Hamelin’s first Beethoven recording. The transcendental difficulties of the Hammerklavier — by far Beethoven’s longest piano sonata, and in the composer’s view also his finest — will always deter all but the greatest pianists of the day, with only a select few able to master its formidable musical, emotional and technical challenges. Marc-André Hamelin, hailed by The New York Times as “a performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” relishes the challenge with all the work’s glory and grandeur. The program is complimented with the third of Beethoven’s Opus 2 sonatas, published when the composer was twelve years old.