A large proportion of Adolphe Blanc’s output was chamber music, and he was much practised in it, with a strength of melody similar to Beethoven’s that is not only surprisingly solid but grips the listener from the start. Although he was French, Blanc’s chamber music has a tone inherited directly from Haydn; and although there are occasional shafts of Debussy that filter through the texture, the overarching feeling is of the cheerful Viennese tradition, without being a proper pastiche. For that reason alone these pieces are worth closer examination: his considerable use of bold chamber techniques, for instance – such as brazen unisons – are managed by the highly polished Fabergé Quartet (comprising members of the NDR Symphony Orchestra) with all the committed drive of a group confident of the quality of the music they are playing.

The general tenor of this music may have been old-fashioned for the time, and certainly out of step with the pioneering work in which Blanc’s contemporaries were engaged, but the Fabergés take this optimistic music at face value and present a performance that is at once both light-hearted and serious about the validity of the music. Largely there is enough rhythmic drive through all the quintets, brought out with enough infectious energy by the Fabergés (particularly in the quirky Tarantella of the Seventh Quintet), to make this recording far more than a chamber music curiosity.