There’s plenty to enjoy here, though Julia Fischer and Daniel Müller-Schott virtually duplicate a programme that Nigel Kennedy and Lynn Harrell put out some years ago for EMI/Warner. As so often is the case, comparisons are instructive. Harrell and Kennedy opt for a marginally more deliberate tempo in the Très vif second movement of the Ravel Duo, though I preferred Harrell’s expressive way at the start of the Lent third movement. Müller-Schott all but suspends vibrato – a gesture that suggests a certain level of sensual bliss – but I’d rather stick with Harrell’s warmth and Kennedy’s heartfelt response to him. Fischer initially mirrors Müller-Schott’s affectedness but thankfully tempers it somewhat as the musical line proceeds.

There’s not much to choose between the two teams in the finale, whereas at the start of Kodály’s Duo Kennedy’s natural penchant for folk-style music lends a spot of added pungency to his attack, and when it comes to the gypsy-style fiddle solo over a cello drone at 4'24" into the finale (Fischer/Müller-Schott) or 4'34" (Kennedy/Harrell), Kennedy captures the music’s sense of improvisation to a T. Fischer sounds just a little too formal, even urbane. Talking in conversation about Erwin Schulhoff’s Duo of 1925 (in the booklet), she’s admirably honest about how she finds certain passages elusive, whether slow or fast, though I’d never have guessed as much had I not read the interview before listening to the CD. The fast Zingaresca has real drive, the finale a dogged, insistent quality.

Filling out their CD, Kennedy and Harrell add a Bach two-part Invention and the brilliant ‘encore’ that Fischer and Müller-Schott also include, the Passacaglia after Handel by Halvorson. Kennedy and Harrell open the piece emphatically and stretch its duration a minute beyond that of Fischer and Müller-Schott. Kennedy and Harrell offer a far more eventful reading, opting to turn some of the slower music into a shimmering tremolando. Fischer and Müller-Schott, on the other hand, rest content with the odd added embellishment, though both employ sul ponticello.

Choosing between the two duos is difficult but for me the presence of Schulhoff’s enigmatic work on the new CD is a little too much of a draw to resist. Paradoxically, were that not the case, I’d incline more towards Kennedy and Harrell, simply because they throw themselves at the Ravel and Kodály works with such wholehearted abandon. Fischer and Müller-Schott are evidently en route to the same destination but they never quite get there.