There’s much to enjoy here. The blend of the two instruments is excellent, and the Salvatore Lagrassa fortepiano, c1815, has a colourful range of sonorities – a pungent, reedy bass register and a clear, sweet treble, just right for Schubert’s many cantabile melodies. Its con sordino sound, for the mysterious quiet passage in the middle of D574’s finale, gives the music a dark, romantic aura that more recent pianos can’t begin to suggest. The performances are alert, imaginative and sensitive, but I don’t feel Manze and Egarr always get to the heart of the music. It’s essential that Schubert’s performers show, as this duo do, that they are aware of the magical, unexpected turns of phrase that are the hallmark of his style. But there’s a balance to be struck; with too much emphasis, particularly if this involves distortion of the time, the sense of wonder disappears. In the middle section of D384’s Andante, Manze takes time to make so many little expressive points that the feeling of gentle motion falters. There are similar instances in the first movements of D385 and D574, yet elsewhere – D574’s quirky Andante, for example – Egarr and Manze seem to get the balance just right.

My other reservation concerns violin style. Manze’s selective employment of vibrato is right for the period but he sometimes neglects alternative routes to emotional expression – soft sensuous tone, appropriate in D385’s Andante, or maintaining a broad legato line. Surely the theme to the same sonata’s finale shouldn’t be broken up by the bow changes but progress in smooth four-bar phrases. Illuminating performances, then, but not ideal ones.