Among the most arresting features discernible in the output of Sir Michael Tippett is that the majority of his most important works fall into recognisably classical categories (operas, symphonies, concertos, string quartets and piano sonatas) that occur throughout his composing career. So with the four piano sonatas, which encompass a time-frame of 48 years and take in his range of creative preoccupations, from the vigorous neoclassicism of the 1930s, through the experimental phase of the 1960s, to a renewed involvement with the ‘classical tradition’ of the 1970s and the process of summation and synthesis that took place during the 1980s. Of equal note is the fact that, in common with his string quartets, no two of Tippett’s sonatas have the same number and arrangement of movements, typical of a composer who sought new solutions to the challenges posed by large-scale instrumental writing over the prev