A special joy of this Beethoven anniversary year has been the opportunity to hear performers of immense intelligence and experience encountering the young Beethoven: a genius in the raw, sometimes derivative, often startingly original, but always demanding to be met on his own, irrepressible terms. Now Frank Peter Zimmermann and Martin Helmchen tackle the three Op 12 Violin Sonatas, plus Op 12’s spiritual cousin, the A minor Sonata, Op 23. Which way, you wonder, will they approach them – with the benefit of Romantic hindsight or as the culmination of a Classical tradition?

If I had to go for one or the other, I’d say that their approach skews towards the Romantic: not so much two instruments developing a line of thought together as violin and piano taking turns to step into the limelight. Both players deploy their full expressive armoury to grand effect at the opening of Op 12 No 1, and then again in the sweeping, sunlit expanses of Op 12 No 3, before withdrawing into an almost Schumann-like intimacy in the slow movements and quieter rondo episodes. They’re never afraid to express themselves poetically or to linger over an expressive moment.

Yet there’s a briskness and momentum about all four performances. Rhythms are clearly and springily articulated, and it certainly helps that Helmchen is playing a Chris Maene straight-strung piano – an instrument whose transparency is perfectly suited to playing of such unforced wit and fantasy. The slow movement of Op 12 No 2 has the sense of an improvisation, and there’s a delicious throwaway quality to the final pay-off of Op 24. In short, these performances wed classical verve to a profoundly Romantic spirit, and I suspect that Beethoven would have rather enjoyed the result.