Two complementary piano masterworks – Beethoven Sonata Op.109 and Brahms Piano Pieces Op.118 – gift intimate insights into the consolations and questions of late-in-life solitude.

Separating the two, Andrew Schultz’s Twelve Variations for Piano Four Hands, commissioned in 1997 by Bernard alongside Stephen Emmerson, draws inspiration from Beethoven‘s world of “inner feeling” to craft a continuously evolving movement of similar epic scale