Recordings of all three of Schumann’s violin sonatas come round less often than you might imagine, so it’s pleasing to welcome this newcomer, played with a high degree of stylistic awareness. Andrew Wan is concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, while Charles Richard-Hamelin recently impressed Harriet Smith in a coupling of Mozart concertos (6/20) and has previously majored in Chopin for this label. Together they have recorded the Beethoven sonatas (Gramophone’s North American edition caught up with Vol 2 last year – 3/21).

They clearly work well together as a duo, in responsive and well-coordinated readings of all three works. The playfulness they locate in the finale of the enigmatic Third Sonata is worthy of note, and elsewhere they don’t underplay the many facets of this music, ranging from the unease of the First Sonata’s opening movement to the miraculous stasis of the Second’s chorale variations. Anybody seeking an introduction to these three works could do a lot worse than take this Canadian recording as their starting point.

Comparisons complicate matters. Wan and Richard-Hamelin meet all the criteria in these performances but nothing can efface the recent memory of Renaud Capuçon and Martha Argerich performing the First Sonata last April in an emotional memorial concert for Nicholas Angelich (DG, 12/22). For all three sonatas, another option is offered by Christian Tetzlaff with Lars Vogt (Ondine, 1/14), captured in a more vivid sound picture that reveals a greater range of dynamic and nuance. HS drew attention to the German duo’s ‘myriad colours and subtle phrasing’, stating that their recording ‘quite simply wipes the floor with the competition’. Blunt, perhaps, but there it is. Wan and Richard-Hamelin do these works proud. Tetzlaff and Vogt, on the other hand, raise them to another level altogether.