The chief interest here is the uniting of Robert and Clara Schumann. And while Robert has the lion’s share of the proceedings, Clara’s F minor Concerto movement is a special attraction. As the useful booklet-note tells us, this curiosity seems haunted less by Robert’s genius than by Chopin’s Second Concerto (also in F minor). Sadly incomplete, it was accompanied by Clara’s forlorn cry, “a woman must not desire to compose – there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?” But Clara was a highly gifted composer, as her completed Piano Concerto proves (something for Oleg Marshev to consider), and I am grateful for his enterprise in making Jozef De Beenhouwer’s performing version of Clara’s work available on record.

This is played with much spirit and so, too, are Robert’s piano-orchestral Opp 92 and 134, the former vintage Schumann with its yearning horn calls and burgeoning melodic beauty. On more familiar territory in the A minor Concerto, Marshev keeps everything smartly on the move, a modern alternative to, say, Dame Myra Hess’s justifiably famous view. But there are many more subtly persuasive, patrician and volatile accounts in the catalogue (Kempff, Lipatti and Argerich respectively), to say nothing of other distinguished readings (Kovacevich, Perahia, Lupu, etc). There is tough competition, too, from Perahia in the two shorter works for piano and orchestra. So the interest here lies firmly with Clara Schumann. The orchestra under Vladimir Ziva provides enthusiastic if at times tub-thumping partnerships, and Danacord’s balance and recording are sound.