Daniel Sepec (violin), Andreas Staier (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMC 902048 ****

Schumann's later works have always been dogged with suggestions of fading creativity, notions predicated on the mental problems that led him to spend, at his own request, his final years in an asylum. And his decision to provide piano accompaniments for Bach's solo violin music seems perverse from a modern perspective, although his declared aim was to help find a new audience for music which was then little-known. The piano part added to Bach's great D minor Chaconne is tactful, and made sound even more so by the circumspection of Andreas Staier's performance on an Erard piano of 1837. Staier and violinist Daniel Sepec's present Schumann's first two violin sonatas with unusually persuasive passion and clarity. The provocative ruminations of the Gesänge der Frühe(Dawn Songs) for piano solo come across less well. See url.ie/55ay