I think I should review a CD today.

If you look at my listening journal, you may notice that I enjoy the music of Beethoven. And his most plentiful oeuvre is the piano sonata, not surprising considering that he was a star piano soloist during his time and probably spent endless hours at the piano working on his sonatas. So it's only natural that I would have a 10-CD box set of The Piano Sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven, performed by Daniel Barenboim.

To me, his piano sonatas are like the diary of a master improviser. These are the ideas that Beethoven noodled at, working out every detail until he was ready to make them public (and, by all accounts, he was a careful, slow worker). While these aren't etudes, he also seems to have been working out his ideas about the instrument itself. I suppose that's not surprising for a working concert pianist with a huge reputation.

There are 32 of these sonatas, ranging from a relatively brief 6th to the monster 29th, "Hammerklavier". A lot of these are his highest genius, concentrated doses of Beethoven's evolution as a musician, as a pianist, and as a man. While I think that his string quartets, symphonies, and even his piano concerti are more enjoyable experiences, there is still a lot of substantial music here. The concentrated motifs that serve as melodic building blocks are less focused in these, leaving him with a more florid approach, highlighting Beethoven's stormy style and what, for his time, was a fairly violent manner of expression. And as the sonatas progress, you can also see his ideas on form evolve, slowly breaking apart the sonata form he inherited from Haydn and Mozart. At times, the rhetoric gets a bit long (hey, it's his one minor failing), but Beethoven's pianos sonatas are one heck of a sensational set of works.

This set was mostly recorded in the late 1960s, when Daniel Barenboim was a young, rising star. Overall, the performances are decent and consistent, but never scintillating. It seems like the young Argentinian he was then hadn't quite mastered the overwhelming series of works. Rarely do we hear a crystalline illumination of the formal concerns and even the most lyrical passages sound like he's just making sure all the notes are precisely placed. On the other hand, Mr. Barenboim is certainly up to the physical challenges.

6 out of 10

CDs listened to today:

• Stephen Albert: Symphony Riverrun
• The Beatles: Revolver
• Bill Watrous: Manhattan Wildlife Refuge
• Ludwig van Beethoven: Sonatas for Piano, disk 1
• The Didjits: Que Sirhan Sirhan