The partnership of pianists Wu Qian and Juho Pohjonen began over a decade ago, having originally collaborated as artists in the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Since that first introduction, both soloists have returned to their duet to explore the piano duo repertoire — a most intimate form of chamber music – two musicians sharing a single instrument, breathing …

Themes of art song, poetry and spirituality run throughout the second album by Korean-American violinist Danbi Um, performed with Finnish pianist Juho Pohjonen. Poème Mystique centers Richard Strauss’s intimate Violin Sonata, written in the year he met his future wife, and Ernest Bloch’s Second Violin Sonata, the title work of the album. By turns ecstatic, spiritual, and fantasy-like, in his …