By the end of this programme of short works – most of which have little more than five-minute spans of music – you can’t imagine why Schumann didn’t write more chamber works for cello. In conjunction with the piano, the cello feels like Schumann’s most authentic voice, the instrument’s deep lyrical sound revealing what lay behind the more excitable aspects of his nature. Nonetheless, in the music presented here, only Op 102 was originally conceived for cello, which accounts for why one doesn’t hear a greater diversity of expressive techniques among the disc’s prevailing atmosphere of reflective lyricism. Both the Drei Romanzen and Märchenbilder were transcribed by its soloist, cellist Marcin Zdunik, and are completely convincing, partly because of his respect for the music’s original impulse. The Märchenbilder, for example, has the cello often in its tenor range, no doubt in reference to the piece having been written for viola.

The disc can’t help but have a certain sameness that has to do with the nature of the works collected here. At times, Schumann even seems to be writing the same work repeatedly, but doing so with so much ingratiating emotionalism that one can hardly complain. Luckily, the fairy-tale imagery in Märchenbilder has plenty of musical quirks that are particularly welcome late in the disc. Performance-wise, Zdunik is often alert to the music’s passing references to opera recitative as well as the composer’s characteristic songfulness. Few piano recordings of Schumann are as convincing as Aleksandra S´wigut’s playing here. And the youthful open-heartedness of the performers is essential to music that’s far from being Schumann’s most substantial, but can charm in ways that only that composer could.