It opens with the Clarinet Sonata that Bowen wrote for Pauline Juler (1914-2003) in 1943, a wonderfully mellifluous, skilful and compact piece which finds Robert Plane and Benjamin Frith operating at the very top of their game. Plane also shines (this time on the bass clarinet) in the uncommonly resourceful and cleverly paced Phantasy Quintet that Bowen penned probably during 1933. Three works for piano trio complete the feast. Finished on New Year’s Day 1926, the Rhapsody Trio in A minor captivates in its soaring lyricism and keen lucidity, its raptly poetic outer sections intriguingly suggesting rather more than a passing acquaintance with Herbert Howells’s contemporaneous chamber output. Another single-movement offering, dating from around 1900 and all that remains of a projected piano trio in D minor, shows what prodigious gifts the teenage Bowen already possessed. Most impressive of all, however, is the E minor Trio, Op 118: first given at Wigmore Hall on April 4, 1946, by the Harry Isaacs Trio, it’s an impeccably crafted, singularly cohesive and formidably fluent affair that yields durable rewards with each new hearing.

I need only add that the Gould Piano Trio and friends perform all this enticing repertoire with matchless understanding, and they have been afforded glowingly realistic sound by the Chandos production team. Not to be missed.