Korean-American violinist Danbi Um’s second album for Avie offers an unusual pairing of sonatas by Richard Strauss and Ernest Bloch, with Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen.

Strauss’s Sonata was composed in 1887, a year before Don Juan and around the time that he fell in love with soprano Pauline de Ahna, who would become his wife and muse. As such, it’s a radiant, romantic work, particularly the swooning Improvisation: Andante cantabile at its heart. Danbi Um emphasises the movement’s songlike character at a swift tempo (7'19" where James Ehnes and Vilde Frang spin it out more romantically to well over eight minutes). Um has a fine sheen to her tone, with plenty of muscle at the lower end, aided by the close placement of the microphones. She and Pohjonen are unhurried in the opening Allegro movement, stressing the ma non troppo instruction. Pohjonen observes the Andante marking at the start of the finale, where Andrew Armstrong and Michail Lifits (with Ehnes and Frang respectively) are far more portentous, and Um takes up the baton in a flowing Allegro that soars to great heights.

Bloch’s Second Violin Sonata, encountered on record all too rarely, was written to counter the ‘blind and primordial forces’ that so shocked audiences in his First. Bloch gave it the title Poème mystique, describing it as ‘the world as it should be: the world of which we dream; a work full of idealism, faith, fervour, hope, where Jewish themes go side by side with the Credo and the Gloria of the Gregorian Chant’. It has a spiritual serenity which Um captures well with her ethereal, fragile tone in the opening movement’s long melodic lines. Hagai Shaham, one of Um’s teachers, offers a rounder tone in his Hyperion recording, but this is a welcome addition to the work’s discography.

Um and Pohjonen round out their recital with two short works. Fauré’s ‘Après un rêve’ makes an appropriately dreamlike introduction to the Bloch, while this enterprising album closes with August Wilhelmj’s arrangement of Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’, sincerely performed.