Schumann composed for piano for ten years, but wanted more. To his wife Clara, he wrote: ‘The piano becomes too limited for me, I hear all sorts of things that I can hardly touch.’ Schumann delved into scores by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but mostly studied Mendelssohn’s quartets. Schumann’s Second String Quartet, the closest to Mendelssohn, is in good hands with the Quatuor Van Kuijk, which received jubilant reviews for its integral Mendelssohn recording.

Romance in the morning, who wouldn’t get out of bed for that? In fact, it gets super-romantic during the morning series focusing on Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Brahms. The palette of these 19th-century composers offers a sampling of emotions, with a golden glow on sixteen strings.