Period-instrument Schumann is an as yet little-explored area when it comes to the chamber music. So Voces Intimae, on paper at least, have a certain appeal. Yet this was a disc that immediately had me reaching for comparisons. Was it the instruments or the interpretation that made these pieces sound so…well, problematic?

The first movement of the First Trio reminds us that Schumann is one of the most readily wounded of the great composers. Too much emphasis on those surging piano chords can stultify the momentum of his creation. And it’s a fine balance between overstating the dynamic contrasts and underplaying them: here, the whole discourse becomes somewhat flat. The finales of both Nos 1 and 3 can pose logistical problems for the pianist in particular: accentuation too readily dipping into heaviness. You’d think the relatively lighter action of a period piano (here a JB Streicher from 1847) might help in this respect but in fact it doesn’t, and its somewhat resonant quality further muddies the impression. There is, in the finale of the Third Trio, some delicate playing between violin and cello, but that isn’t enough to salvage the reading as a whole.

The beginning of the slow movement of No 1 – one of the most telling and testing passages in Schumann’s piano trios, with its mood at once distant, tragic, inward, impassioned – seems prosaic alongside the Beaux Arts or Andsnes and the Tetzlaff siblings; in fact I prefer – sacrilege though this may be to some – cellist Tanja Tetzlaff’s restraint alongside Bernard Greenhouse’s more open-hearted approach. And in the slow movement of the Third, Andsnes et al manage Schumann’s increasing agitation more organically. So, alas, not recommendable, despite the interest value of the instruments themselves.