Turning 90 in December 2013, Menahem Pressler was the pianist of the legendary Beaux Arts Trio for almost 55 years, and continues to enjoy a blossoming career as soloist and recitalist, while remaining as committed to teaching as ever.

For the greater part of his life, Pressler has lived with the two great sonatas recorded here, and has recounted how he studied Beethoven’s Sonata in A flat major, Op.110 as a young man after having fled Nazi Germany for Israel in 1939: ‘I didn't really understand many of the things that I understand now. I only understood the enormous emotional... tearing, tearing on my insides...’.

Schubert’s last sonata D.960, explores the emotions of a man who knows he has a limited time to live, and in which the slow movement resonates like a funeral march whilst also showing happiness and peace of mind.