"What next after Beethoven?" François-Frédéric Guy asked in the programme for his latest recital. The question is perhaps double-edged. Over the past few years, the French pianist has been consolidating his formidable reputation as a Beethoven interpreter, and many have wondered just what his next move might be. Guy himself, however, also seems to view the question in historical terms. His recital flanked Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata with Liszt's Bénédiction de Dieu dans la Solitude and Brahms's Sonata No 3 in F Minor. Both works, Guy added, "explore different ways of escape from the giant's shadow".

One's primary impression of the recital, however, was not so much that Liszt and Brahms constitute antithetical responses to the Beethovenian revolution, but that Guy's interpretation of the Waldstein is now haunted by both composers. His treatment of the final movement, with its ecstatically repeated phrases, had much of the shimmering quality he brought to the Liszt. The Waldstein's opening was similarly infused with a Brahmsian combination of aggression, lyricism and grit.

As always with Guy, one was aware of a provocative intelligence at work, though on occasion one was also conscious of a mannered quality. In all three works, there were protracted pauses between sections, as if to announce the imminence of startling musical revelations. The Waldstein's brief adagio seemed to hover in suspended animation, as Guy coaxed one colouristic effect from the piano after another in order to make the point that the movement feeds both Liszt's examinations of pianistic sonority and the harmonic strangeness of the Intermezzo from the Brahms sonata. Technically and interpretatively, however, much that Guy does remains staggering. For all his occasional flaws, he is a wonderful artist.