Each piece on this second volume in Ensemble MidtVest’s survey of chamber music by Niels Gade is troubled by issues of organisation or maturity. We hear Gade’s E minor String Quartet (1889), whose first movement was inserted from a different work in D minor (transposed up a tone), while the jettisoned original opener and a discarded Andantino are also included. To finish we have the early Scherzo for piano quartet (1836). In between comes the second recent recording of the first movement of an aborted Piano Trio in B flat (1839).

As on the Danish Piano Trio’s recording, this charming and not insubstantial movement (14 minutes here) suggests that focusing on an abstract, heroic narrative – rather than flagellating himself with Mendelssohn’s neoclassical rule book – drew more individual and charming music from Gade. The instrumental interplay is delicious and the melodies soar; the result is, ironically, closer to the spirit of Mendelssohn and Schumann than Gade probably imagined. There’s no shortage of fresh air in this performance, but the Danish Piano Trio are more high-octane and reactive.

Conversely, all the tinkering with the E minor String Quartet shows. Those moments of Schumann-style momentum never last and Gade’s melodies can appear stilted, built for development rather than born of inspiration. He does conjure some charm in the finale (shades of his mentor’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and we hear hints of his Danish tendency towards humour and contrast. But you emerge from this often beautifully played disc – even from the early Scherzo, with its fertile, catchy main theme – with the impression of a sturdy musical engineer. Only the relatively short span of the B flat Trio shows that Gade was, occasionally, rather more.