This recording has two claims on your attention. It’s the latest release in Harmonia Mundi’s ‘Stradivari’ project showcasing historic instruments from the collection of the Musée de la Musique in Paris: in this case, a cello by Pietro Guarneri from 1724 and a grand piano from 1855 by Carl Giulius Gebauhr of Königsberg. And it contains what is, so far as I know, the only recording of the Nocturne of 1825 by Camille Pleyel and Charles-Nicolas Baudiot.

That was certainly my favourite feature of the album – a virtuoso potpourri on themes from Die Zauberflöte, done with charm and wit. As Berlioz (whose fiancée jilted him in favour of Pleyel) mentions in his Mémoires, the opera was known in France at that time only as a heavily doctored farrago called Les mystères d’Isis, and there’s much here that doesn’t sound at all Mozartian. Good clean fun: it quite overshadows the Beethoven Bei Männern Variations that precede it.

But that’s the end of the good news. There doesn’t seem to be any compelling historical reason to play the Op 5 Sonatas on these particular instruments, and in a crowded field these are not compelling performances. Pidoux plays with a refined tone, low on vibrato, and sometimes struggles to be heard against lower-register passagework on de Williencourt’s vintage piano – which, although bright and pearly above the stave, can sound unpleasantly metallic when forced.

Congested, slightly muzzy recorded sound doesn’t help interpretations that never quite sound as if both players are entirely at ease either with their instruments or with Beethoven’s quickfire mood changes. Of interest for the reasons outlined earlier; but if Beethoven is your priority you’d do better with François-Frédéric Guy and Xavier Phillips, to name just one alternative.