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We are Danny's boys - and Danny's girls - and according to the Times yesterday, there are 633 of us. Somewhere back in 2007 we were the lucky ones who got our act together to buy tickets for the whole of Daniel Barenboim's eight-concert cycle of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas at the Festival Hall. Over the past three weeks, tickets to each concert have become some of the hottest must-haves in town. The hall has been turning hopeful buyers away in droves. Already the cycle is being lauded as London's musical event of the year - and even, according to the Evening Standard, of the decade. And now there is just one final concert and four more sonatas before it is all over. Actually, the real hero of these three weeks is not Barenboim. It is Beethoven himself. I am painfully aware that anything I try to write about the 32 sonatas is bound to be banal, because no one's words can do justice to the imaginative range of the music that Beethoven conjured for the keyboard over his lifetime. So I will take refuge in something that the pianist Louis Kentner once wrote. The Beethoven piano sonatas, said Kentner, should be presented to the first Martian visitor to our planet as proof of what human civilisation is capable of. Here, friend, we should say to the little green men. This is the best of us.

Lyapunov. Etudes. Louis Kentner. APR 5620 Chopin: Etudes Ronald Smith APR 5567 A PUPIL of Balakirev, Sergey Lyapunov's 12 Etudes d'Execution Transcendental give a reminder of the remarkable keyboard skills of Louis Kentner whose 1949 recordings for Columbia are very much a benchmark. Each has its own own descriptive title: Lullaby, Dance of the Ghosts, Carillon, Storm etc. and ending with Liszt. ***

Jeremy Nicholas's fine liner notes quote a 1951 reviewer complaining of \"exaggerated rubato and an uncontrolled romantic excess\"-what better recommendation could there possibly be? The grand style suits the cascading sonorities of the Balakirev works, perfectly paired here with the Liapounov Etudes, which I had not heard before and found enthralling.

[Louis Kentner] (1905-87) was a fine pianist who for some reason never quite achieved the international reputation he deserved. Josef Hoffman observed that the music required \"fingers of steel and a heart of gold\", and that's what Kentner gave us. He had an excellent technique and used lots of color in elegant, forward-moving accounts.

The ensuing [LISZT] program includes several of the old magician's most demanding and exacting works, recorded in the late 1930s and 1940s. [Louis Kentner] was an ardent advocate of Liszt's music, but this is not sweeping, overpowering Liszt. Instead, his playing impresses with its finely etched lines, good taste, and musical sense. For runs and other passagework of the right hand, Kentner was in command of a golden technique and could produce effects of glittering elegance.

The director of the London Mozart Players was a blithe spirit. [Harry Blech] (1910-99, not to be confused with conductor Leo Blech) began his career performing with the Halle Orchestra conducted by Sir Hamilton Harty; in 1942 he founded the London Wind Players, which in 1949 evolved into the London Mozart Players, where he continued until he retired in 1984.

The second volume of [LISZT] recordings made by this Silesian artist contains such gems as 'La Leggierezza', 'Gnomenreigen', 'Liebestraum 3', 'Feux-follets', 'Venezia e Napoli', 'Czardas Macabre', as well as three of the Paganini Etudes and a few transcriptions. The recordings date from 1937 to 1951 and from Studio 3, Abbey Road, London.

''Ah, he can play,'' a Frenchman in the audience said, kissing the tips of his fingers. ''But he killed [Frederic Chopin].'' At a private jury session, Nikita Magaloff, the Swiss pianist, rose to say it was unthinkable that such an artist should not make it to the finals. [Martha Argerich], who won the competition in 1965 and is extremely popular here, seconded the motion and said she was ''ashamed'' to be a member of the jury. To make matters worse, she repeated the statement on television, and then promptly quit. Even Trybuna Ludu, the staid Communist party organ, was moved to say that Mr. [Pogorelic] was ''a pianist of such a class and an artistic personality of such caliber'' that removing him before the finals ''must be regarded as a mistake.'' Mr. Pogorelic, meanwhile, was transformed into a cult hero, and when he strode into the audience Saturday night, the television cameras followed his every move, the crowd chanted, ''Ivo, Ivo,'' and he raised his head to cast a cold, contemptuous stare at the jury in the balcony. ''I'm the first to say the boy is very talented,'' Mr. [Eugene List] said. ''But I voted very low for him. This is a special kind of competition. It's only Chopin. He doesn't respect the music. He uses extremes to the point of distortion. And he puts on too much of an act.'' He went on to describe how exquisitely Mr. Pogorelic had played.

The performance I was most eager to hear was by Adila Fachiri and Donald Tovey. Fachiri was the elder sister of Jelly d'Aranyi, and the sisters were noted exponents of the avantgarde in the 1920s. They were also nieces of the great Joseph Joachim, the paragon of classical taste in the 19th Century. Tovey was a musical giant, yet he was hardly recorded at all, so this reading is an exceptionally valuable document.