A few months ago I reviewed two new discs of Mendelssohn’s cello music (12/12). Ultimately, neither Luca Fiorentini (Brilliant Classics) nor Gary Hoffman (La Dolce Volta) had much to say, but that certainly isn’t true of this new disc from the Romanian duo of Laura Buruiana and Ferenc Vizi. Here we have a cellist with a particularly plangent tone and a pianist amply capable of bringing off Mendelssohn’s fingery, virtuoso writing.

These qualities are well demonstrated in such passages as the finale of the Second Sonata, which they take at a daring lick but without losing any clarity. In fact they give Isserlis and Tan a run for their money, even though the latter has the technical advantage of a shallower-toned fortepiano. But for a truly sparky reading, Maisky and Tiempo remain unsurpassed here. In the soliloquy of the same sonata’s Adagio, Vizi sets a more flowing tempo than Huw Watkins or Tiempo and Buruiana reacts with ardently soulful playing. The First Sonata is also well judged, though they are less exultant than some, particularly at the assai animato marking in the finale, with its outburst of dotted rhythms: the Watkins brothers are particularly persuasive here.

In the Variations concertantes there’s a sensitive interplay between the two musicians, though there are moments where the cellist is slightly drowned out. But perhaps the ultimate test of any Mendelssohn performance is to be found not in the virtuoso pages but in the more inward ones. In the ravishing Lied ohne Worte, Buruiana and Vizi choose a tempo closer to the spacious Isserlis and Tan than to the faster Watkins siblings. But Isserlis proves a hard act to follow, finding as he does much to say about every single phrase and turning what can be merely charming into a profound meditation.