Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony arranged for piano duet by Xaver Scharwenka (1850-1924) is a premiere recording. When I welcomed Vol 1 (with the Beethoven-Scharwenka Eroica, A/21), I described it as ‘no workaday in-house arrangement’ but ‘ingeniously and handsomely voiced … the skilled work of a master’. The same pertains here. And, as with Symphony No 3, one wonders if the mighty Fifth Symphony of Ludwig van can really come off in this reduced, domestic medium. Once more, one’s initial resistance quickly evaporates. What the listener is presented with is a thoroughly rewarding, often revelatory view of this over-played and over-recorded masterpiece, one that might well send you back to a recording of the original remarking ‘well, I’ve never noticed that before’. Uys and Schoeman use a Fazioli F278 in the Menuhin Hall at Stoke d’Abernon with a big, sonorous tone providing added heft to Scharwenka’s richly voiced score.

After the fire and thunderbolts comes the intimacy of Schumann’s Andante and Variations in B flat, Op 46, originally scored for two pianos, two cellos and horn. Robert Matthew-Walker’s excellent booklet tells us that it was Mendelssohn who persuaded Schumann to produce a version for two pianos. The two in question are a couple of Steinway Model Ds heard in a perfectly voiced match: it’s impossible to tell when Piano 1 takes over from Piano 2 when the music is in question-and-answer mode or simply repeating a phrase. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the second variation played more beautifully – one of those pages of quintessential Schumann that, like the Intermezzo from Faschingsschwank aus Wien, tears at your heart-strings and won’t leave your head for days.

I wish that here and in the Saint-Saëns Variations Somm had inserted some track numbers to allow those without scores a clearer identification of the works’ sections and structures. Saint-Saëns’s Op 35 (a homage to Beethoven’s Variations and Fugue, Op 35) is based on the Trio of the Minuet from Beethoven’s Sonata in E flat, Op 31 No 3, a glittering entertainment of mischievous co-ordination challenges for the two pianists, with lively, humorous interplay and topped by a clever fugue. Uys, who has been primo for the Beethoven and Schumann, swaps to secondo for another performance with Schoeman that ranks among the best I’ve heard of the piece, the kind that can only be achieved by long association. All this is enhanced by the notably cushioned warmth of the sound engineering. Vol 3, please!