The Delphi Piano Trio are a prize-winning ensemble from North America for whom ‘food and friendship … are at the heart of great chamber music’ and this social aspect of performing informs both their playing and social media/community activities. Listening to this typical programme of established classics framing a premiere recording – Bolcom’s 2014 Trio, of which they gave the first concert outing as well – their mutual understanding and interaction are palpable.

They take a nicely expansive approach to Beethoven’s Op 70 No 2, especially in the Allegretto ma non troppo third movement, lingering in the long lyrical central episode. It is all very beautifully done and elsewhere the Delphis catch the cut-and-thrust of Beethoven’s invention very nicely, especially in the double-variation-form second movement, even if they cannot quite match the incisiveness of Melnikov, Faust and Queyras. Granted, the rival trio are more period-orientated in approach (not least with Melnikov’s fortepiano), which gives their sound a sharper edge, but theirs is an even deeper level of musical insight which the American ensemble don’t quite achieve.

Nonetheless, the Delphi Trio’s account is still a strong one, as is their very tidy account of Brahms’s compact late C minor Trio (1886). This elicits the finest playing on the disc, the three players at their very best, completely at one with Brahms’s concentrated writing. So they are, too, in the Bolcom, which they commissioned from the 76-year-old composer and recorded to celebrate his 80th birthday last year. The outer pair of its three movements (respectively energetic and strongly driven; the lower case titles are intentional) are rather sectional and concise in design, unlike the central serene, molto sostenuto, which is much more expansive and a touch Messiaen-like. The Haydnesque false ending in the finale is a nice touch. First-rate sound.