Christian Tetzlaff (violin), Tanja Tetzlaff (cello), Leif Ove Andsnes (piano)EMI Classics 094 180 2 (2 CDs) ***

Only the first of Schumann’s three piano trios has won any kind of favour with listeners and performers. They are, to be sure, problematic pieces. It’s all too easy to make their expressive world sound too aspirational, to burden it with heavier messages than it can bear, and at the same time to make the sonic picture sound heavy, even clotted. The Tetzlaff/Tetzlaff/Andsnes trio give well-judged accounts of the music, providing light and shade so that the interplay between the instruments doesn’t become a kind of swirling blur. The playing is revealing but rather on the cool side, music reflected on rather than caught up in any surge of passion. As well as the three numbered trios the set includes the Fantasy Pieces, Op 88, and Theodor Kirchner’s arrangement of the Op 56 Studies for pedal piano. See url.ie/57cs