It was time resulting from lockdown that prompted Alexandra Mackenzie and Ingrid Sawers to delve into this wealth of largely forgotten music for cello and piano by female composers from the earlier and mid-20th century. Amy Horrocks pensively launches a recital that continues with the brooding inwardness of Avril Coleridge-Taylor, in the first of two song transcriptions whose successor yields affecting poise. Margaret Jacobsohn is heard in music of real elegance, then the Suite of Isabel Dunlop moves from a confiding Prelude via a trenchant Dance to an Elegy somewhere between the ruminative and the resigned. Ivy Parkin contributes a soulful ‘Aria’, wistful ‘Cradle Song’ then bracing ‘Chanson espagnole’; Annie Maria Grimson is represented by a suitably twilit study then Harriett Claiborne Dixon by one whose sheer melodic elaboration and cumulative fervour provide this recital’s longest single item. That by Christabel Baxendale is the more plaintive for its brevity, with that by Ethel Barns idyllic in its lilting warmth.

Best represented here is Marie Dare, her expressive subtlety demonstrated through the rapt eloquence of Le lac as also the bittersweet tones of Romance and sensual moodiness of The Spanish Shawl. Her Hebridean Suite started out as two impressions of the Isle of Jura – thus the plangency of ‘Summer Sea’ and imposing panorama as evoked by ‘The Paps of Jura’; if inspiration then flags a little, the songfulness of ‘The Blue Lochan’ and winsomeness of ‘A Day Dream’ complement the pathos of ‘Shieling Song’ and impetus of ‘A Fisherman’s Song’.

Throughout this recital, the commitment of Mackenzie and Sawers to their cause cannot be doubted, with the only proviso being the relatively uniform expression of what is heard. That said, the overall enrichment of repertoire with several of these miniatures is readily apparent.