This was the second of two recitals by cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras and pianist Alexander Melnikov, exploring Beethoven’s cello sonatas and variations, a repertoire the pair have made their own of late. The concert was structured round the two Op 102 sonatas from 1815; late, exploratory works that push at the boundaries of form. No 1 in C traverses a huge emotional range in two compact movements, each an allegro vivace prefaced by a slow introduction. No 2 in D releases the tension of its first movement in a set of variations on a hymnic chorale, before the work closes with one of Beethoven’s all-embracing fugues.

Both works are finely wrought, with a sense of closeness in the way the musical dialogues and responses develop, and Queyras and Melnikov sustained the intimacy of the music with playing of extraordinary refinement. Queyras’s tone was warm and clear, avoiding extravagant gestures and histrionic extremes. In chamber music, Melnikov replaces the grand manner of his solo recitals with a less emphatic – though extraordinary subtle – expressive range. The slow sections of both works attained a sense of rapt, spiritual intensity that was profound in the extreme.

Each sonata was prefaced by one of the sets of variations that Beethoven wrote in, or around, 1796; the first on Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, the second on a Theme from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus – in fact, the well-known See, the Conquering Hero Comes. Both works are, to some extent, weighted towards the pianist, who states each theme against a cello counter-melody and is then given the first variation as a solo. The performances were sharply characterised and contrasted – the Mozart variations warm, lyrical and humane; the Handel more poised and crystalline. There was a single encore, Schumann’s Fantasiestück No 1, which was beautifully done, the singing quality of Queyras’s playing very much to the fore.