We’re so accustomed these days to talking about Brahms’s two ‘cello sonatas’ that it’s rarely if ever mentioned that Brahms originally published both works as being ‘for piano and violoncello’ – very possibly a nod to Beethoven. This isn’t actually mentioned in the booklet accompanying Yu Kosuge and Benedict Kloeckner’s readings here, but it’s Kosuge rather than Kloeckner who authors the artist’s statement and it’s ‘the deep insight that Kosuge possesses as a pianist’ to which the subsequent notes attribute the performances’ ‘solid direction’.

What actually sent me post-haste to the booklet, though – and equally rapidly digging out the scores – wasn’t the sense of anything markedly unusual about either the balance or the dynamic between cellist and pianist but instead their approach to tempo and metre. Which, upon further reflection as I type this, do particularly serve the piano. To name a few, the brief but pronounced rallentando on the penultimate bar of No 1’s very opening phrase (and again, although less pronounced, at the recapitulation); that same movement’s markedly leisurely overall tempo; the weighted rubato and heightened pauses at the outset and within No 1’s second-movement trio, which create an almost stop-start impression (1'42"); and the slowing of tempo in No 2’s opening Allegro vivace around bar 27, as a drop in dynamic and cello tessitura bring about a newfound darkness (4'00").

As for the knock-on expressive effects of all this, while I wouldn’t say that Kosuge’s colouring and shaping are necessarily more deft and detailed than what you hear from, say, Grimaud, Tharaud or Wang, to name a few recent beautifully sensitive readings, there’s certainly the space for the ear to pick it up with greater ease. For instance, I found myself appreciating more than usual the accompanying piano figures at No 1’s first movement recapitulation (10'45"), even though, when I then checked those bars against the aforementioned faster interpretations, Grimaud et al were no less beautifully shaped and coloured per se, and the balance between them and their cellists no less sensitive.

It’s remiss of me to not have dwelt much yet on Kloeckner, so let me now correct that by saying that his own contribution to the above is immensely enjoyable – multicoloured, lyrically voiced, dynamically wide-ranging. I love the dark, introverted melancholy of his first movement – the way his gently detached phrasing suggests both poise and pain, to which you’re then naturally back-referencing at the outset of the central Menuetto. Also the way he moves an argument forwards, such as his injection of portamento, in No 2’s first movement at the theme’s first reappearance (2'00"). The sense of partnership between him and Kosuge is very strong indeed.

Perhaps these wouldn’t be my desert-island Brahms sonatas but I suspect their polish and thought will be luring me back to them every once in a while, to keep discovering new things.