A welcome release from The Gould Piano Trio, now into its third decade, whose repertoire stretches right across this medium. It opens with the Piano Trio (1938) by Amy Beach – its concise movements taking in a wistful ‘song without words’, a deft amalgam of intermezzo and scherzo, then an animated finale which, as with its predecessor, makes spirited use of an Inuit folk song. Coincidentally, perhaps, the piece looks back several decades to an era whose Romantic poise was engagingly assaulted by Charles Ives in his own Piano Trio (1911). The earnest dialogue of its initial movement serves as foil to a scherzo where cheerfully colliding allusion to popular and collegiate songs are thrown into relief by the finale; here, the studious build-ups to hymnlike perorations suggest an underlying seriousness present throughout.

Rebecca Clarke was equally misunderstood (and for not entirely musical reasons), her Piano Trio (1921) one of several pieces destined to remain the peak of her achievement. Influences from Debussy and Ravel are often cited; more significant is the way that these, along with the vehemence of Bartók, combine in a highly distinctive idiom – whether the emotional volatility of the opening Moderato, fraught eloquence of the Andante or the driving impetus of the final Allegro, whose powerful culmination leads into a coda of mingled resignation and defiance.

Readers may well have encountered these pieces via the tautly incisive Neave Trio, quirkily capricious Bekova Sisters or appealingly lucid Hartley Trio. The excellence of the Gould’s playing, with sound a model of clarity and balance, yet earns this album a firm recommendation.