This feels – to use a footballing analogy – like an album of two halves. In the first, we have two sets of exquisite miniatures by the Estonian Tõnu Kõrvits, separated by Schumann’s delightful, sonatina-like First Sonata, Op 105; then, after the break as it were, Grieg’s heftier but no less delightful Third, Op 45, his last and, frankly, finest. It should be noted that Duo Gazzana play from Grieg’s fair copy here, having observed some minor differences with the published score.

The major novelties, pace the Grieg, are Kõrvits’s suites, both composed for Duo Gazzana and receiving their first recordings here. They are beautifully made and beautifully rendered. The title of the Stalker Suite (2017) may mislead; as the subtitle confirms, it refers to the 1979 film by cult Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky. Its four movements are personal musings by Kõrvits with no touchpoint to Eduard Artemyev’s film score. The earlier Notturni (2014) are, marginally, the deeper score, songs that now cannot be sung, Natascia Gazzana’s violin reminiscing over their ghost just as she and sister Raffaella do in Stalker.

The measure of Duo Gazzana’s playing is found in their accounts of the two sonatas. In the Grieg, for all their musical ardour, they cannot match the fire that Eldbjørg Hemsing and Simon Trpčeski brought to the opening Allegro molto ed appassionato, or the delicacy and refinement of the central Allegretto espressivo alla romanza. But then Hemsing and Trpčeski’s account, warmly commended by Richard Bratby in these pages, is arguably the work’s finest recording for many years. By comparison, Duo Gazzana seem a touch deliberate, and I waited in vain for them to let rip in the final Allegro animato. They seem freer in Schumann’s First, giving an account that, if not quite equal to Christian Tetzlaff and the late Lars Vogt, certainly gives theirs a run for its money. ECM’s sound is first-rate.