For half a century Henle’s edition of the Beethoven sonatas – the “New Testament” of the piano repertoire – has been universally recognized as the standard starting-point for any serious study of these works.

Now, with the publication of the three op. 31 sonatas in revised separate editions, we are raising the yardstick another notch: no less a musician than the pianist and conductor Murray Perahia has agreed, for the first time ever, to publish his fingerings and, as co-editor, to confide hi...