Charming Schumann
Sitting side by side must come naturally to the Eckerle Piano Duo…Naxos’s Brahms discs were entrusted to Silke Thora-Matthies and Christian Köhn, who achieved the most professional results. The Eckerles are similarly polished and, if anything, more imaginative, although there’s an air of comfortable domesticity to these performances that suits these arrangements well. This is not wild Schumann, but especially in the String Quartet No. 3, it’s Schumann the devoted husband and father. It’s charming, affectionate stuff. Perhaps this is “only” a curiosity, but it’s extremely well done, and I will be looking forward to subsequent volumes, which I believe will include arrangements of all four symphonies.