Between 2003 and 2015, Ronald Brautigam recorded all of Beethoven’s music for solo piano – a huge undertaking resulting in a total of 15 highly acclaimed discs. Choosing to perform the works on the fortepiano, Brautigam began with a sonata cycle that prompted one reviewer to describe it as a challenge to “the very notion of playing this music on modern instruments, a stylistic paradigm shift.” In 2010, after nine discs of sonatas, he went on to record the composer’s variations, bagatelles and other piano pieces – an astonishing range of works, from a Bagatelle lasting just 11 seconds to the monumental Diabelli Variations, and from a charming Rondo in C major written by a 13-year-old Beethoven to what is often regarded as the composer’s “Last Musical Thought,” an Andante maestoso dated 1826. Brautigam’s sonata recordings appeared as a box set in 2014, and they are now joined by this 6-disc box of the remaining works for solo piano, presented in the original hybrid SACD format and accompanied by the full original booklets. Spanning more than 40 years of Beethoven’s life, the music is performed on three different instruments, all built by Paul McNulty, illustrating the rapid development of the fortepiano during the composer’s lifetime.