The Scottish-Estonian duo of Michael Foyle and Maksim Štšura swiftly follow up their first volume of Beethoven’s violin sonatas (4/21) with a set taking in the last of the ‘early’ works, Op 12 No 3 (1797 98), along with the three of Op 30 (1801 02). The qualities that marked out Vol 1 remain present throughout Vol 2: not only an immediate sense of the close bond between the two players caught in a focused Belgian studio acoustic but also an acute reading of all Beethoven’s markings, reproduced faithfully and without mannerism.

The result, once again, is a sequence of performances that satisfy – and often go far further than that – but never quite scintillate. There’s a sense of cleanness, of each technical or expressive challenge surmounted and ticked off the list. Just as in the first volume, an impression of safety prevails: not only in terms of tempo, although in outer movements they are a notch more stately than a number of other pairings (Ibragimova/Tiberghien and Faust/Melnikov provided fairly recent comparisons with the previous volume), but also in the feeling that they never quite let themselves get swept up in the blaze of inspiration that created these works. There’s little to complain about in their performance of the ‘big’ C minor Sonata, Op 30 No 2, for example, but the almost claustrophobic atmosphere of menace in the outer movements, as ideas, themes and textures pile in upon one another, is more palpably conveyed by the likes of the duos mentioned above or (on period instruments) by Viktoria Mullova and Alasdair Beatson, who live each gesture as if it were at the very moment of creation.

Nevertheless, movements such as the variations that close Op 30 No 1 draw from these musicians an enticing range of characterisations. The evident care taken by both players and the attractive variety of tone colours Foyle draws from his 1750 Gagliano make the prospect of the final volume in this series a tempting one.