Mariam Batsashvili Schubert Arr Liszt Ständchen, Serenade (after Schubert's 'schwanengesang' D 957)

On her first Warner Classics album pianist Mariam Batsashvili combines solo works by Franz Liszt – a figure of special significance for her – and his contemporary Frédéric Chopin. She left her native Georgia to study at the Franz Liszt Conservatory in Weimar and gained international recognition in 2014 when she won the 10th Franz Liszt Piano Competition. Chopin was just a year older than Liszt and the two became good friends in Paris. The two pianist-composers are, as Batsashvili explains, “very, very different in the way they express themselves, but I can hear in their music that they respected each other greatly.”

This CD's main attraction for many will be Gil Shaham's velvety violin in gorgeous, largely off-beat music. Others will relish these Schubert works in arrangements that replace the piano with the expert guitar of Göran Söllscher, enhancing the impression of hearing Schubert's music in the intimate domestic setting for which it was written. Most of the works are short, melodically rich dance-based gems on which Shaham and Söllscher lavish a Romantic tonal fullness and freedom rarely heard these days. Sometimes that's a bit too much of a good thing, as works like the Violin Sonata in D veer close to the sentimental.

SCHUBERT: SONGS WITHOUT WORDS is an elegant recital by pianist Daria Hovora and cellist Mischa Maisky that allows us to hear Schubert songs, beautifully rich as they are with the texts as sung by many of our finest singers, here solely for the instrumental line. Somehow the interplay between melody and accompaniment (always an equal partnership in Schubert's hands) is heightened by this experience. Not that the entire album is appropriated by the cello standing in for a vocalist: the opening work is "Sonata for Arpeggione and Klavier" and is one of the highlights of the CD. But just listen to the performances of 'Standchen', 'An die Musik' and 'Du bist die Ruhe' and hear the extraordinary marriage between the piano and cello, singing as beautifully as any other version. This is one of those CDs that bears keeping out for multiple listenings in the late evening.