Alkan’s Sonata has been recorded several times before, most notably by Moray Welsh and Ronald Smith (APR), yet it has remained obstinately in the wings of the cello repertoire. This new version must surely drag it centre-stage. It is a masterpiece: meaty, melodic and, as with most of Alkan’s music, extremely demanding to play – Mendelssohn with balls. The Allegretto second movement with its sly, pungent harmonies and the mystical, almost impressionistic slow movement especially are further proof, if it were needed, of Alkan’s genius.

Chopin’s Cello Sonata, his final major work and the last published in his lifetime, has never lacked champions, despite the notorious problems of balance in the first movement. Here the musical line is focused and unambiguous, though I personally dislike the da capo repeat which turns what is by far the longest movement (usually about 10 minutes) into one approaching 15, making it quite disproportionate to the scale of the other three. However, it offers the chance to hear twice the heart-catching little motif at 2'42" which I’ve rarely heard played so affectingly (Ma and Ax – Sony, 6/95 – for instance, over-indulge and swamp it with emotion). Both performances from this outstanding partnership are out of the top drawer, fresh, spontaneous and beautifully recorded.

The story of the French cello sonata is continued on the hardly less impressive disc from Queyras and Tharaud. Vividly captured in a slightly warmer acoustic, theirs is a more intimate approach which exactly suits the two much shorter sonatas of Debussy and Poulenc, the former with its abrupt changes of direction and unpredictable mood swings, the latter brimful of Poulencian wit and, not surprisingly as it was sketched in 1940 (completed in 1948), replete with some self-plagiarising from Babar.

These are fine accounts, the programme made even more attractive by the inclusion of the seven short movements of Poulenc’s Suite française (1935) based on 16th-century dances by Claude Gervaise. I’d never heard it before. It’s a charmer. Apart from this, there are five other short works by the two composers making a truly delightful whole.