When both Schumann and Brahms were so enthusiastic about the instrument, cellists can rightly mourn that Schumann didn’t leave more for it beyond his Cello Concerto than the Fünf Stücke im Volkston, and that Brahms didn’t supplement his own magnificent pair of cello sonatas and the Double Concerto with a concerto for cello alone. Appropriately enough for these two composers whose lives became so intertwined, the reason behind both of these gaps was relationship issues with others. For Schumann, it was the increasingly difficult relationship as his insanity progressed with his wife Clara, who therefore destroyed his late Five Romances for cello before they could be published. For Brahms, it was the hope of mending his falling-out with the violinist Joseph Joachim that played a major role in transforming a solo concerto for the cellist Robert Hausmann into a double one also featuring the violin. So it would be hard for anyone to come up with a more tightly intertwined programme than the one Poltéra has devised: he presents his own cello transcriptions of each of their D minor violin sonatas, separated by their respective contributions to the FAE Sonata co-written for Joachim, followed by an unspoken-love-themed song each from Brahms and Clara Schumann.

Beyond the conceptual, the album’s musical pleasures begin with the beautiful tone Poltéra brings to it all. Also the elegance in his playing of what can be read as quite choppy dynamic markings; you really hear this in the series of hairpin swells that open Brahms’s D minor Sonata, because while they’re fully incorporated, his rapid zooms in and out don’t come at the expense of continuity of line (which is my slight quibble with Pieter Wispelwey’s playing of his own transcription). I’m also thoroughly taken with the greater softness Poltéra’s cello has brought to Schumann’s own sharply pained D minor Sonata, not least the lightly worn legato romance he brings to the first movement’s plaintive rising figures at bar 6. No surprise therefore to also discover that the song transcriptions sound under his lyrical fingers as though made for the cello.

The partnering from Stott is exquisitely sensitive and fluid, tempos all feel right, the engineering nicely brings out the surrounding acoustic of Neumarkt’s Reitstadel, and although there’s some audible breathing it’s not enough to affect one’s pleasure. Overall, a thoroughly classy job.