Hideyo Harada is a prize-winning pianist trained in Japan, Germany and Russia who offers a Schumann recital showing the composer at his dizzying and Romantic height. For Schumann the first movement of the Fantasie, an outcry to his beloved Clara, is "more impassioned than anything I have ever written; a deep lament for you". The challenge is both elusive and intimidating, and although Harada's vividness and instinct for drama are hardly in doubt, she is less attuned to subtlety. She launches the Fantasie in boldly arresting style and the wild, quasi-fugal chase at the heart of the sixth section of Kreisleriana holds no terrors for her. At the same time she is overanxious to squeeze the last ounce out of every phrase and the result can be stilted and periodically pugnacious.

This is notably true in the Fantasie's finale, where you are hardly carried away by music once described as being like constantly shifting sunset vapour. The silvery chiming at the centre of Kreisleriana's opening is overinterpreted (try Géza Anda on Testament for another world of elegance and finesse). The fifth section from the same work is another example of a pianist disinclined to leave well alone, and even in smaller, less demanding fare such as the Arabeske (offered, as it were, as an encore), the playing is marred by selfconscious voicing and inflection. Such intense scrutiny is a far cry from, say, Pollini's formidably patrician style in the Fantasie (DG, 6/96) or Argerich's flashes of summer lightning in both the major works (RCA, 1/91). Audite's sound, like the playing, is bold and brilliantly lit.

This interesting disc demonstrates Bach 's place in the North German tradition of organ composition, in particular his relationship with Böhm, who was possibly his organ teacher, and Buxtehude. Much of the music will be familiar to many readers, but this particular compilation is well devised to show the structural, thematic and textural influences exercised on Bach's music by Böhm and Buxtehude. The extensive booklet notes help to make these links clear, with informative comments on the musical features and compositional background of the pieces. It is a well balanced programme, with a variety of textures, genres and registrations demonstrating the diversity of the North German tradition. Martin Neu 's playing has energy and verve, with well chosen registrations that demonstrate the versatility of this relatively small Ahrend organ, which is ideally suited to this repertoire. The reed stops speak vigorously, while the Pleno is bright without being overwhelming. An impressive range of softer solo colours are well demonstrated too. Bach 's famous D major Prelude and Fugue is given a dramatic and spacious performance, while the playful character of Böhm 's Capriccio is well conveyed. Overall , this is an engaging performance and an effective contextualisation of Bach 's music.

Twenty three years on, this CD suitably marks Schumann's 200th anniversary. Apart from occasional disconcerting instances of final chords being chopped short (in the original or the re-mastering?), this is a highly enjoyable and authoritative 'souvenir'.

Cumbersome titles too, but many readers will know that Schumann envisaged the fascinating Studies and Sketches as being performed upon a piano (grand or otherwise) with pedalboard. Little is lost by performing them, as here, on organ instead! And the Hoffenheim Walcker certainly gives added value! This particular organ (2m/27st) was built in 1846 – only two years after Schumann produced his music – with cone-valve chests and mechanical action, and was restored by Steinmeyer in 1974. Romantic delights abound. The intriguing specification includes a Physharmonika stop (indubitably fizzy), and a Holzharmonika, which has tapering pipes despite being made of, well ... wood; but such a short list can give no hint of such rich sounds.

Is the star of the show the organ or the composer? Or perhaps the inestimably sensitive and persuasive performer, recorded the year after he became organ professor at Saar Hochschule. Certainly Schumann's complete organ works provide a highly entertaining hour – or happily dip in ad lib. Despite the formal discipline involved, there is much poetry here too. The composer himself felt the BACH fugues might outlive all his other works. The sixth is a mighty tour de force. The Sketches are far from 'sketchy', showing Schumann at his obsessive/neurotic but always compulsive best. A veritable celebratory feast.

Audite continues its survey of Karl Böhm's RIAS Berlin recordings from the early 1950s with a Strauss disc which includes Don Juan, the Alpine Symphony and a sequence of waltzes from Rosenkavalier. The sound of the 1954 Don Juan is very good indeed – Audite has used the original broadcast tapes – and the performance has an irresistible sense of forward momentum as well as the lucidity and clarity that characterizes Böhm's Strauss. The RIAS SO plays wonderfully, as it does throughout the disc. The Alpine Symphony sounds very good too, even though it dates from two years earlier. Böhm's conducting has a seemingly effortless long-term control over this grandest of Strauss's orchestral epics; in places here he also seems a slightly more swashbuckling mountaineer than in his Dresden recording from 1957. This fine disc ends with a lovely set of waltzes from Rosenkavalier. Notes are excellent and I, for one, can't wait for more in this series.

This disc includes the op.56 and 58 collections for Pedalflügel alongside the six BACH fugues. The first two collections present any number of challenges with regard to performance practice, not least concerning registration and tempi, plus technical hurdles. However, this CD offers intelligent solutions coupled with invigorating playing on an organ within an acoustic that allows the music to leave the page and delight the listener. The often sumptuous choices of registration deserve special mention. Andreas Rothkopf demonstrates a clear understanding of Schumann's larger musical language, and the listener is the rich beneficiary.

This accomplished team sounds so desperate to make Schumann's passionate nature...

Sie meidet dekorative, pathetische Floskeln. Beste Voraussetzungen also für die...

Über der goldgeprägten Signatur blickt ein dämonisch-jugendliches...

Schumann's Piano Quintet has had literally dozens of performances on record, but in only about half a dozen cases is it coupled with the Quartet . One of these, by the Michelangelo Piano Quartet on Chandos, with Elena Matteucsi as pianist , was the first to make use of period instruments. This was not strictly authentic: the piano used was an 1830 Simon fortepiano, and by 1842 the very particular Clara Schumann, for whom the work was written, would have preferred a more recent Härtel or Graf, examples of which she and Robert possessed. No piano identification is given on the present disc but the instrument sounds like a modern one, strong in tone and strongly played here by Claire-Marie Le Guay. The excellent recording sees to it that there are virtually no difficulties over balance, with clarity even in the closing bars of the Quartet's Andante cantabile when the cello is asked to tune his bottom string down from C to a soft supportive B flat.

Clarity is also crucial in the many passages in these two works when Schumann indulges what he called his Fugenpassion, his love of the Bach fugues over which the newly marrieds pored. The bold opening theme of the Quintet almost certainly derives from a Bach prelude in the Well-Tempered Clavier, and the lucidity with which Le Guay articulates this is admirable. She is strong and sure of finger, in the Quintet filled with nervous energy in the episodes of the curious little March, and she is Molto vivace indeed in the Scherzo so marked. There are echoes here of Mendelssohn, whom they admired and who suggested some revisions (and who was one of many who admired Clara, to Robert's brief irritation). The final Allegro ma non troppo needs a clear head as well as clear fingers to hold it all together, but all is well here with a strongly conclusive finish to the work. The Quartet is in some ways a more original piece than the more finished Quintet, and well deserves to be placed beside it. The movements include a Scherzo in racing octaves reflecting Schumann's love of Weber's piano writing (he must have known the First Piano Concerto), a beautiful singing Andante that sets off here with some lovely cello playing, and, relished by the players, lots of fugal fun in the finale.

Prompted by C. P. E. Bach's assertion (in his 1775 letter to Forkel) that his father 'loved and studied' the music of, among others, Froberger, Frescobaldi, Pachelbel, Bruhns, Buxtehude and Böhm, Martin Neu has programmed some Bach alongside two of his 'north German icons', while promising a future disc of Bach and two of his south German ones. It's a good idea , but if the intention was to trace an influence, the programme chosen is hardly the most obvious. The two 'Gigue' Fugues would show much more dramatically the Buxtehude/Bach connection , while Böhm's C major Praeludium alongside Bach's in the same key (BWV 531 ) could have forged an intriguing aural link between teacher and pupil. That 's not even to mention the golden opportunities afforded by choosing parallel preludes based on the same chorales from all three composers. In fact, Neu seems to have gone deliberately in the other direction, focusing on the differences rather than the similarities.

It's not just the programme which does that; and, to be fair, his own booklet note suggests that the choice of programme is governed more by theological than musical considerations (although quite where Buxtehude's Passacaglia or Böhm' s Capriccio fit into the theological picture escapes me). Neu's own playing emphasizes the differences starkly. While with Buxtehude he adopts the practice, much currently in vogue, of underlining the improvisatory nature of the works by means of generous rhythmic and metrical freedom, with Bach he adopts a rhythmic rigour which, even in that most Buxtehudian of works, BWV 532, rarely runs out of phase with the metronome. He approaches Böhm a little closer to the manner in which he plays his Bach, and there is a wonderful sense of purpose in the two large sets of chorale variations; but, while he does try to forge a link between the Capriccio and the Fugue of BWV 532, apart from the fact that they are both in D major and have a lively mien, I don't readily hear any connection, not least since the Böhm was intended for harpsichord rather than organ.

In isolation, though, I derive huge satisfaction from everyone of Neu's performances. Indeed, I'd say these are some of the most rewarding performances of any of these pieces currently available on disc, the Bach works brilliantly paced while the unashamed virtuosity of Buxtehude's three pieces is conveyed with sparkling flamboyance. It helps, too, that this new Ahrend organ is such a splendid vehicle for this music. It's an object-lesson in how, in organ design (as in so much else in life), less is best, for barely two dozen stops offer just about every sound and effect we could want. The sheer vitality and colour of the instrument is best revealed in the Böhm Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele variations, and all Neu's registrations are mapped out (although not particularly clearly) in the booklet. A somewhat drainpipe quality to the pedal Trompetenbass is the only thing which doesn't quite fit, giving a faintly ridiculous air to the Bach Fugue.

In short, then, Martin Neu comes up with some very good performances indeed, all of which are well worth hearing on their own terms, the organ is one of the sweetest and most attractive I've heard on disc for a while, and the Audite SACD recording is of the highest quality, mixing a nice sense of comfort with a vivid presence. Yet the sum of the parts doesn't add up; as aural evidence of the link between Bach and his 'north German icons', this misses the mark by a mile.