Brahms was not averse to making arrangements of his instrumental sonatas, and the Op 78 Violin Sonata, the first of his three, turns up here in both original and cello versions. The differences in register of course invite differences of approach. Pieter Wispelwey and Dejan Lazic are both strong, idiosyncratic players, and they take Brahms’s marking for the opening movement, Vivace ma non troppo, with an emphasis on the vivace element, keeping the line fluent and phrasing firm. Yet the lighter violin can seem to come closer to a work of some wistfulness, the opening phrase taking on, with Nikolaj Znaider and Yefim Bronfman, a gentle melancholy that suits the music well. The hesitancy of this dotted phrase marks the whole of the sonata’s invention, and is picked up with touching effect, as Clara Schumann was moved to find, when Brahms quotes an earlier song in the finale. This is all sensitively done. So is the Second Sonata, with delightful touches: when the Andante gives way to a faster section, it is here played as gaily as a Brahms waltz, one that turns faintly spectral on its return with the pizzicato violin. Perhaps the finale, Presto agitato, deserves more extrovert agitation, but these are most thoughtful and sympathetic performances. There is also room on the disc for the lively scherzo which as a young man Brahms wrote for a composite sonata, with movements by Schumann and Albert Dietrich.

Wispelwey and Lazic are much more open and impassioned, with Wispelwey tending to overphrase in the first movement of the E minor Cello Sonata in his wish to draw the utmost emotion from every note. In the light Allegretto quasi Menuetto the rhythm becomes winsome, even coy, making something too superficial out of music of great natural charm. But reservations are swept away by their magnificent handling of the finale, which is played fast and with genuine emotional energy as well as conquering virtuosity. Proper care, too, has been taken in recording what can be difficult balance: Brahms retained the old appellation of these sonatas as “for piano and cello”, in that order. Wispelwey has also made his own arrangement of the First Clarinet Sonata, presumably taking Brahms’s own arrangement of the work for viola but moving it easily and effectively to the cello.