FAIRIES, elves and trolls are not obvious bedfellows for Beethoven. Even if they were, you would probably expect to hear from the great man first, before flitting off into the land of make-believe.

But Martin Roscoe, behind his relaxed persona, is no slave to convention. He turned it on its head in his piano recital for the British Music Society, to the point of playing his encore just before the interval.

By then we had heard from the Grieg of the Lyric Pieces, all Norwegian folk-tales, from an elf in Schumann’s Album Leaves, and fairies in Debussy’s Préludes.

A different kind of spell infused two Beethoven sonatas, both in C minor, his most portentous key. The boisterous opening to Op 10 No 1, not altogether smooth at the edges, firmly contrasted its two themes, before a hypnotic stillness in the slow movement. The lightning finale was both shapely and lucid.

But the magic was not over yet. In Beethoven’s Op 111, his last sonata, Roscoe was explosive, for the only time in the evening, angrily percussive in the first movement. It was deceptive, and prelude to an utterly mesmerising Arietta, whose high trills seemed to come from another planet. Spellbinding, like the fairies.