Trio Gaspard return with a third selection from across Haydn’s output of piano trios. The C major and E minor works are both well known and widely performed but they are framed here by the very early Partita in E flat and a two-movement work in F whose misleadingly low Hoboken number belies its 1784 composition date.

This was one of a group of three trios published by Artaria in 1786 (in an edition so slapdash that Haydn remonstrated strongly in correspondence with the publishing house) and dedicated to Marianne, Princess Grassalkovics, a niece of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. It’s a real charmer, and it’s puzzling why it isn’t better known. The opening Vivace froths and fizzes, enhanced by folkish ornaments from violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha and pianist Nicholas Rimmer. And the vivid presence of cellist Vashti Mimosa Hunter is a rebuke to any who would continue to dismiss Haydn’s trios as piano sonatas with strings shackled to the keyboard player’s left and right hands. The slightly pompous minuet finale has more of a flow here than in the Beaux Arts Trio’s performance (Philips, 3/78), where it is stretched out into a stately sarabande.

Those who have followed this series so far will not be surprised by the high levels of virtuosity and performative imagination that are evident throughout. Richard Wigmore remarked upon these players’ ‘palpable delight in the unexpected’ (Vol 1, 9/22) and Richard Bratby drew attention to ‘a freshness, a warmth and a sense of humour that feels entirely on Haydn’s wavelength’ (Vol 2, 3/23). The same goes for this third volume, whether in the substantial works of Haydn’s compositional maturity or in the decorous galanterie of the Partita. Trio Gaspard close with a work written for them by Kit Armstrong (b1992); his jargon-infested programme note in the booklet is fairly impenetrable but Revêtements itself is a meaty miniature, refracting piano trio and folk music tropes through a modernist prism.