Of the eight works that Nicholas Daniel and Julius Drake play on this disc – seven by Robert Schumann and one by his wife, Clara – only Robert’s Drei Romanzen Op 94 were originally intended for oboe and piano. But as Stephen Johnson suggests in his typically absorbing sleeve notes: “Far from being offended by the arrangements … [Schumann] would almost certainly have been delighted by them.”
Daniel himself is responsible for the arrangement of Clara’s violin and piano Drei Romanzen Op 22, which he also plays, and for Robert’s Fantasiestücke Op 73, better known in the version with clarinet. But perhaps the most unexpected pieces here are the Three Duos, which turn out to be transcriptions of pieces from the Six Canonic Studies Op 56 and the Three Sketches Op 58, which Schumann composed in 1845 for the fashionable pedal piano.
