This is a disc of two halves. It opens with the greatest clarinet quintet ever penned and then abruptly switches gear – leaping forwards 90-odd years – with Elliott Carter’s Esprit rude/esprit doux (1985). This bracing duo for flute and clarinet is the pivot on which the Phoenix Ensemble’s programme turns, the concentration of its writing in marked contrast to Brahms’s autumnal, expansive flow as much as the succession of late vignettes that comprise the American’s own, smaller-scale Clarinet Quintet (2007).

The community of spirit between the two quintets is all the more remarkable for the difference in manner and scale: all five of Carter’s movements can fit within the duration of Brahms’s opening Allegro. Where they differ is in Carter’s whimsicality; is his Quintet – also a late work – a wry antithesis to Brahms’s? The Phoenix may not quite match the virtuosity of the performers on Bridge’s Gramophone Award-nominated disc in 2010 but do find the humour.

Among other oddities here are the different playing styles that the Phoenix Ensemble adopt. I recall the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1982 visit to the BBC Proms where, having rendered a virtuoso account of movements from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, they reverted to a performing style more like a 1940s film soundtrack for Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique. The difference here is not quite as marked, for sure, but compared to BIS’s star-studded account led by Martin Fröst, the Phoenix sound a touch outmoded, for all the fluency of their playing. Navona’s sound does not help here, the performance lacking the marvellous clarity of the Swedish label.