Only a matter of months after the appearance of his fine recording of Schumann’s Violin Concerto (2/12), Ulf Wallin now turns his attention to the violin sonatas. Of the three, the masterpiece (if any there be) is the Second, composed in autumn 1851, shortly after the First, with which Schumann expressed his dissatisfaction. The Third is from a couple of years later and is a work in which some hear all too apparently the disintegration of Schumann’s sanity; indeed, some violinists refuse to perform it, feeling that it does the composer’s reputation no favours.

Wallin’s clearest rival in this repertoire is Carolin Widmann with the pianist Dénes Várjon on ECM, praised by Duncan Druce for ‘an expressive flexibility that’s surely authentic’. Comparing them side by side, Wallin is a touch more outgoing in comparison to Widmann’s compelling inwardness of expression. Wallin’s tempi are broader almost everywhere (although the finale of the First Sonata goes with a terrific swing), but he captures ideally the turbulence of the First Sonata, so reminiscent of the sound world of the First Piano Trio, and the irresistible drive of the Second’s Lebhaft. The balance with the piano of Roland Pöntinen seems natural: where Widmann’s tone occasionally becomes subsumed within the piano (the wondrous pizzicato third movement of the Second Sonata, for example), Wallin’s always cuts through. He’s more liberal with vibrato, too, while Widmann favours clarity over continuous beauty – which is by no means to the music’s detriment. Wallin and Pöntinen perform the supposedly troublesome Third Sonata with a seriousness of intent that reveals its many virtues. But Widmann does that too: so honours will have to be even between the two recordings. Those for whom Widmann’s recording was something of a revelation will find these works illuminated dramatically differently by Wallin and Pöntinen. The curious should not be displeased with either recording; lovers of this music will surely make shelf-space for both.