There is no shortage of recordings of Brahms’s complete sonatas for violin and piano by artists legendary and otherwise. And why not? They are among the composer’s most eloquent creations, with a seemingly endless unfolding of thematic inspiration, harmonic richness and rhythmic subtlety. So it is no burden to encounter the fresh perspective on the sonatas offered on this new disc by the German violinist Christoph Schickedanz and Japanese pianist Chiharu Iinuma, who appear to have immersed themselves in the works’ distinctive language.

The three sonatas hail from Brahms’s maturity, and they share an inevitability of utterance and interaction. The first two, Opp 78 and 100, are fountains of lyricism, with the instruments weaving lines as if engaged in a series of tender and vibrant conversations throughout their respective three movements; the third, Op 108, boasts four movements of heightened rumination, at turns dramatic and graceful. Schickedanz and Iinuma, who both studied at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, approach these scores as if discovering them anew. The violinist is an elegant artist who pays keen attention to shadings and details, uses vibrato with restraint and shows more interest in conveying the music’s intimacy than making big, Brahmsian statements. He has an ideal collaborator in Iinuma, a pianist sensitive to every shift in rhythm and texture, and fully in command of the challenging keyboard-writing.

The pair handle tempos, balances and transitions with seamless assurance, benefiting not only the later Brahms but also the fervid Scherzo in C minor (WoO2), which the 20-year-old composer wrote, along with Schumann and Albert Dietrich, in 1853 for the so-called F-A-E Sonata in tribute to Joseph Joachim. Whatever they touch, Schickedanz and Iinuma are outstanding champions of youthful and seasoned Brahms.