Both Schumann's violin and piano sonatas were written at white heat in the autumn of 1851, the first in a mere five days and the second in eight, while Clara (so the diary tells us) burned with impatience to try them over with Wasielewski, the newly appointed young leader of Schumann's Dusseldorf orchestra. It's because Gerard Poulet and Jean-Francois Heisser leave you in no doubt whatsoever about the urgency of the inspiration that I enjoyed this new coupling despite a few reservations. Their tempos for the bigger flanking movements of the A minor work and the first movement of the D minor are in fact markedly faster than Schumann's own metronome markings. Yet they play with sufficient conviction to justify their choice. Everything is relished to the full, and not least by the pianist, always so anxious to ensure that no point of cunning craftsmanship or textural subtlety goes unobserved.
But is he at times over-emphatic? Though not worried by balance in the A minor work, in its successor I did often think the piano too forward, with a touch of stridency in its tone in the turbulence of the first and last movements. Of the two artists Poulet certainly struck me as the more sensitively responsive to Schumann's confidences, and not least in the delicately-scored, chorale-inspired slow movement. Whereas the much-praised Kremer/Argerich DG coupling offers no extras, this disc is completed by the three Romances originally written two years earlier for oboe and piano though with violin and clarinet cited as valid alternatives. Again I would have liked to hear just a little less accompaniment, just a little more of Poulet's sweetly singing violin. But there's no mistaking each player's dedication to Schumann's cause.'