Sample Jennifer Kloetzel’s solo phrase at the start of Beethoven’s Variations on Handel’s ‘See the conqu’ring hero comes’ and you’ll hear cello-playing that’s notable for its warmth, inward expressiveness and emotional reserve. Turn then to her most obvious recent rival in this repertoire, Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax on their latest Sony recording (meaningfully titled ‘Hope Amid Tears’ but a similar programme) and the effect is hardly less subtle. However, when the first piano variation arrives less than a minute in, you encounter the principal difference between these two sets: Robert Koenig’s playing is quietly contrapuntal, Emanuel Ax’s informed by a notably wider range of colour and dynamics.

And so a comparative pattern emerges that stays true for more or less the whole of this Beethoven cello sonata cycle. In the Rondo from the First Sonata, Ma and Ax command considerable reserves of energy (though Steven Isserlis and Robert Levin, playing a fortepiano, are even more frisky – Hyperion, 2/14), whereas Kloetzel and Koenig are predominantly lyrical. In the Third Sonata’s first movement, Ax’s playing is more forceful and subtly pedalled but once into the cello’s tenor range it is Koenig who commands a sweeter, Feuermann-style vibrancy. Ma and Ax make a typically Beethovenian protest out of the Scherzo (again Isserlis and Levin, an Awards nominee when it first appeared, compare favourably), whereas Kloetzel and Koenig’s approach is far lighter. Likewise in the Fifth Sonata, which at the start is very much Allegro con brio as marked. Ax’s first entry is a real call to arms, more assertive than Koenig, whose temperate approach I nonetheless enjoy.

With Kloetzel, the Fourth Sonata’s opening Andante resonates more deeply than its rival, the cello tone truly lovely. Not that Ma’s isn’t, just that both in the sonatas and the Mozart and Handel Variations Kloetzel comes across as so utterly natural, knowing her place in the scheme of things, very much an equal partner. And don’t forget that the Op 5 Sonatas marked the first time in the history of the sonata that the cello was not used simply as a continuo instrument. Just occasionally Ax, a fine player and make no mistake, pushes the boundaries as a super-bold duo-partner. The newcomers more than hold their own, and given three CDs rather than two they’re able to offer us a rarely heard extra, the Horn Sonata in an elegant cello-and-piano arrangement, beautifully played.

Please don’t suspect that I’m attempting to pull the stars from their rightful firmament, just that there’s room for all comers in this repertoire and in my book Jennifer Kloetzel and Robert Koenig are in their way every bit as pleasing as Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax. It’s just that they make their points more quietly and sweetly. And that’s just hunky-dory in my book.