Though a version of Mendelssohn’s C minor Sonata for viola and piano (from Koch and Keller) is still listed in the CD catalogue, the work was completely new to me – as I guess it may be for many others too. Unpublished until 1966, it dates from the composer’s mid-teens, before he had found a true voice of his own. But the precocity of the craftsmanship is outstanding, not least in the extended finale cast as variations on a theme like a youthful pre-echo of that of the well-known Variations serieuses for piano of some 17 years later. The richly expressive, largely keyboard-sustained, penultimate Adagio variation in C major somehow compensates for the absence of an independent slow movement. Though in his own ringing ebullience Howard sometimes overrides the viola’s gentler low voice, the performance has enough bite and brio to gain the work a well-deserved comeback.
It was good planning to start the disc with Franz Kleinheinz’s viola and piano arrangement of the early Serenade for string trio by Beethoven, always one of Mendelssohn’s most influential heroes. All seven movements are again very positively characterized and contrasted by both artists, not forgetting a delightfully light-fingered “Alla Polacca”. The final word goes to Mendelssohn’s lifelong friend and admirer, Schumann – not this time in youth but in the last of his endearing little suites for solo instruments and piano written three years before his breakdown. In this more intimate fairy-tale world, I thought ensemble between both players at its closest and best, with the eloquent viola of Coletti seeming just a little more forwardly placed. The gem of the set is surely the last, a soothingly nostalgic lullaby that I can’t recall ever hearing more sensitively phrased or shaded.'