Though their composers are great names, not one of the works here is a repertory piece, and the reasons must be obvious: how often do we find a horn, two cellos and two pianos on the same stage for a chamber concert, as Schumann's Andante and Variations requires? There is only one rival version in the current catalogue (on the Accord label), and that was recorded in the 1970s, although there are five in the composer's later version for two pianos. As for the Brahms Trio, it has been recorded several times, but it is good to have another performance as sympathetic as this. Besides Ashkenazy the central figure in all these works is the horn player, Radovan Vlatkovic, whose warm yet delicate shaping of all this music is attractive. But it is a pity that the recording makes him overshadow both the violin and the piano, one would expect an engineer to be tempted to tame the horn's power for fear of the opposite, but in this case temptation seems to have been too resolutely thrust aside.
The first movement of Brahms's Trio moves a touch cautiously, but the artists could rightly point out that it is, after all, an Andante rather than, say an Allegretto. Furthermore, if this is too gentle and subdued, at least that makes the scherzo which follows all the more exciting, especially as it is played with elan. The beautiful Adagio mesto in E flat minor is also finely shaped: it is possibly an elegy from the composer's mother, who had recently died.
I have little space to discuss the Schumann performances; suffice it to say that they are imaginative and positive although it would be idle to claim that the music represents him at his very finest. There are performances of the Brahms Trio that are even finer and more spontaneous-sounding than this one, not least a famous Decca version with Ashkenazy, Perlman and Tuckwell and one from 1960 with Rudolf Serkin (Sony), but if you want these three horn works together this new disc earns a recommendation.'