As most readers know, Anthony Marwood and Susan Tomes are violinist and pianist of the stalwart Schumann-championing Florestan Trio. Here, they remind us not of the youthful romantic ‘Florestan’ but of the older Schumann, finding solace from the trauma of an ill-starred public appointment in the delights of chamber music-making at home. My regret is that their shortish disc omits his less familiar Third (and last) Sonata, belatedly published a century after his death with his own replacements for the two movements originally supplied by Brahms and Dietrich way back in 1853.
Since Isabelle Faust and Silke Avenhaus offered all three sonatas on a single CPO disc last year, that is where comparison has to be made. The English pair are less highly strung than the Germans, and in the shorter, less complex A minor Sonata I preferred their simpler, less consciously ‘interpreted’ telling of its nostalgic tale. Nor do Marwood and Tomes try to race the suggested metronome tempo for its Lebhaft finale.
Honours are more equally divided in the wider horizons of the D minor work. Here again the Germans opt for a breathless home-coming. But their fleeter, more mercurial approach (with its lighter keyboard bass) somehow lessens awareness of its almost obsessive repetition of short motifs. I also thought they convey more of the einfach of the chorale-inspired slow movement, where the English pair overheat its middle section. But their ardour is welcome elsewhere. The three Op 94 miniatures are played with winsome charm, though inevitably one misses that strain of plangency in the tone of the oboe – for which they were originally conceived. Apart from occasionally over-favouring the piano, the Hyperion recording is warm and true