This second volume completes the Kungsbacka’s eminently satisfying survey of Schumann’s music for piano trio. The Third Trio of 1851 is perhaps the most maligned of the three by those who discern a waning of Schumann’s creative powers. A performance of such evident commitment and belief as this, though, shows their concerns to be misplaced. The Kungsbacka players clearly feel no need to apologise or make excuses for Schumann’s last excursion into piano trio territory, and perhaps the slight favouring of the piano over the strings in the balance is the only criticism to be made. Certainly some of the sounds made by violinist Malin Broman and cellist Jesper Svedberg – sweet portamentos and some telling asides – demonstrate their evident affection for this music.

The instrumental balance better suits the cleaner lines of Theodor Kirchner’s arrangement of the prosaically monikered Sechs Clavierstücke in canonischer Form – now a common adjunct to any survey of the trios – but the real glory of this coupling is in the final work, a piano quartet in C minor written at the end of the 1820s but abandoned by the composer: ‘Nothing for it,’ he wrote. ‘The quartet will have to be cobbled together as a symphony.’ The manuscript bears indications for a projected orchestration but nothing came of the project and the work didn’t see the light of day until 1979. It doesn’t share with its far better-known E flat counterpart the sharp thematic contours or assured working-out that would become a hallmark of Schumann’s mature music but it’s clearly a work of great confidence and assurance. There are several recordings but, again, the Kungsbacka’s sure grasp of its scale and ambition make it a rewarding listen. Lawrence Power is luxury casting on viola, contributing to a seductively rich tonal palette.