This album seeks to conjure the atmosphere of the salons of Central Europe during the so-called Biedermeyer period, the early years of Romanticism when chamber music performances, even professional ones, still took place more often in the private homes of the middle classes than in public concert halls. The three instruments involved here – flute, clarinet and piano – were all at important stages of development at the time, and the modern copies of the original winds used reveal that they had harder and more penetrating tones in those days, while the carefully chosen restored German square piano – the 1820s equivalent of an upright to reflect the music’s domestic habitat – has a delicate sound if not a particularly clean one. The damping mechanism is light, resulting in a somewhat ‘wet’ wash not unlike a zither, which, though pleasingly evocative in itself, is quiet and indistinct, even against a flute or clarinet. The recording doesn’t help much, mind, being made not in a house but a church whose walls and high ceiling seem to respond more to the woodwind tones than to the piano, which struggles to make an impact in the murk.

The music here is not really of the best. Hummel’s Sonata for flute and piano will do little to raise interest in this composer, bowling along prettily enough but without much drive or formal dynamism, and it doesn’t seem to have inspired either Anders Muskens on piano or Florencia Gómez on flute much, else they might have shown more interest in the long crescendo that summons the finale or the changes of mood that follow. Schubert’s Variations on his own ‘Trockne Blumen’ from Die schöne Müllerin is an empty virtuoso vehicle bizarrely overlaid on an otherwise atmospheric song that surely no player could do much with. The teenage Mendelssohn’s Clarinet Sonata (unpublished in his lifetime) shows typical native skill and sophistication, as well as, in the first movement, an attractively gloomy and Romantic first subject leading to a second with beautiful harp-like ripples that sound well on the square piano, and there is also a lovely folk-like melody (stated at first by clarinet alone) for the slow movement. Schumann’s Fantasiestücke are by far the best things on the programme, deservedly the only music here to have a regular place on concert stages today. The gentleness of the piano suits their touching poetry, and the little hesitations by Muskens and clarinettist Elia Celegato give them a wistful charm. An interesting release to hear once, but perhaps not to return to often.