Pity Joachim Raff. Pity any fine second-rank composer who had the misfortune to work within the orbit of Liszt, Brahms and the Schumanns – and, moreover, who happened to be prolific. ‘It can hardly be avoided that insignificant material also reaches the public’, wrote one contemporary critic, of Raff’s Cello Sonata, Op 183. ‘We would include in this category the aforementioned sonata.’

Ouch. I don’t think anyone who listened to this new recording by Christoph Croisé and Oxana Shevchenko would agree with that appraisal. Yes, the sonata’s style is closer to Mendelssohn than one might expect from a work premiered in 1873, but those Mendelssohnian qualities – lyricism, transparency and verve (just listen to that bravura opening) – are overlaid with a virtuosity (particularly in the piano-writing) and a largeness of spirit that admit the influence of Liszt without being overwhelmed by it. There’s a wonderfully vivid musical imagination at work here, and the Two Fantasy Pieces, as well as the sweeping Duo, Op 59 – a sonata by any other name – belong to the high-Romantic world of Schumann’s cello music.

Croisé and Shevchenko are wholly inside Raff’s world; Croisé’s focused, almost viola-like upper register is complemented by gloriously mellow G and C strings, and while Shevchenko supplies glittering waterfalls of tone at Raff’s more exultant climaxes, the two of them also have the measure of the more tender moments. Their phrasing ebbs and flows but never wallows, and they bring a touching Innigkeit to the Two Romances, Op 182 (originally written for horn). In all, it’s a thoroughly engaging 70 minutes of music-making, with the pair’s unforced eloquence giving them the edge over their closest rivals on disc, Joseph Mendoes and Taeyeon Lim (Toccata Classics).