Sol Gabetta plays a pair of 18th-century instruments, and teams up with Bertrand Chamayou on a fortepiano from Schumann’s lifetime and with the gut strings and natural brass of the Basel Chamber Orchestra. She is recorded in two studio sessions two years apart and opens her programme with the chamber works, building up to the Concerto. Gautier Capuçon, on the other hand, opens with the Concerto in a concert performance from 2015 and couples it with the chamber works in versions from Martha Argerich’s Lugano festival dating from 2009 12.

The microphones focus intently on Gabetta’s Guadagnini in the Concerto, intimately capturing the instrument’s rich, throaty tone. Capuçon is placed a little further away, although Erato’s engineering faithfully reproduces the sheer range of sounds he draws from his instrument (the details of which are not identified in the disc packaging). Playing the two recordings back-to-back failed to make a choice between them any the easier: with Gabetta the conversation is one-to-one; with Capuçon it is a gripping oration. Antonini’s Swiss band, with their soft-toned woodwinds, are a match for Haitink’s ‘army of generals’, guided by the veteran conductor’s decades of experience.

Chamayou is beautifully responsive in the chamber works, for which Gabetta switches to a Goffriller. Argerich, for Capuçon, is simply unique and her contribution has been assessed in these pages before. Capuçon’s disc also has the benefit of the four Fantasy Pieces for piano trio, in which big brother Renaud joins the duo. There is much that is special in both discs, for all their points of correspondence and divergence. While the foregoing may decide you in favour of one or the other of these two quality products, your reviewer, with some relief, is pleased that he gets to keep both.