Only a few of Haydn’s piano sonatas are in the minor mode, and they are all sombre and defiant in tone. This famous sonata in e minor opens with an impatient and insistent motif in what is surely one of the Viennese master’s most passionate sonata movements.

The middle movement in G major, by contrast, transports us into a different world that is flooded with light. The finale sets off in restless manner, and its alternation of major and minor provides a cheerfully ironic close to the work. Y...