It’s been less than a year since Alpha released Fazıl Say’s thrilling and thought-provoking duo recital with Patricia Kopatchinskaja (2/23). This new programme features Friedemann Eichhorn, the pianist’s frequent collaborator. Now, Eichhorn is a very fine player – his tone is handsome, his intonation solid and his phrasing flexible and expressive – but he’s not an interpretative risk-taker like Kopatchinskaja, and that’s probably for the best. What we have here instead are thoughtfully and consistently musical performances that are wholly satisfying in their own right.

Take Eichhorn and Say’s reading of Schumann’s A minor Sonata, for example. If you demand white-hot intensity, turn to Argerich with Kremer (DG, 1/87) or with Capuçon (DG, 12/22). This new interpretation is considerably smaller-scaled – one can imagine being in Robert and Clara’s parlour – and subtly detailed. Note how Say keeps the busy, often breathless piano part feather-light, providing a welcome foil for Eichhorn’s warm, singing legato bowing. And I very much like how both musicians’ suppleness allows them to maintain a natural sense of flow through the tempo shifts in the third of Schumann’s Op 94 Romances.

The inclusion of the FAE Sonata (1853) – a composite project by Schumann, Brahms and Albert Dietrich to honour Joseph Joachim (and his personal motto, ‘frei aber einsam’ – ‘free but lonely’) – is a lovely surprise. One hears Brahms’s bracingly urgent Scherzo frequently but Dietrich’s opening movement is rarely offered, and I find it highly engaging, especially when played with such fervent affection.

I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect of Say’s transcription for violin and piano of the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. I’d heard Alexander Ritter’s arrangement of the latter for the same instruments and found it rather wan (there’s a 2016 recording by Gerald Schubert and Bernadette Bartos on Gramola), but Say gets right to the throbbing heart of these works. In his version, the violin doesn’t always have the main melodic line, but occasionally picks up subsidiary lines so there’s no feeling of ‘violin with piano accompaniment’. And, inspired by Liszt’s famous transcription, he’s able to produce remarkably rapturous sounds. Eichhorn plays with such abandon here that I think he can be forgiven for pressing a little too hard at the climaxes (although as a result he can sound rather like a voluptuous Wagnerian soprano). And Say plays like a man possessed. Indeed, his playing in the final minutes of the Liebestod left me breathless. Do try to hear it.