As Habakuk Traber observes in his perceptive notes, the late 19th and early 20th centuries were something of a golden age for French chamber music with wind – these three pieces emerging from composers who were hardly contemporaries, though written in little more than a decade.

Théodore Dubois’s Dixtuor (1909) evokes a chamber symphony in its writing for wind quintet and string quintet, but also the thematic density evident over its four movements, which imparts a Brahmsian expressive weight to an otherwise Gallic formal clarity. It is especially noticeable in the decided seriousness of the opening movement, with a gradual lightening of tone in the rhapsodic Larghetto, a whimsical intermezzo and the final Allegretto exuding an animated vigour complemented by a playful secondary theme en route to the effervescent conclusion.

Vincent d’Indy was a composer keen on blurring generic boundaries but in his Chanson et danses (1898) he is found focusing on expressive archetypes ideally suited to the wind septet in music respectively soulful and capricious. André Caplet’s early death was a grievous loss for French music, as his Suite persane (1900) confirms in a piquant interplay of occidental melodies with oriental harmonies across the course of three movements that set a potent example – not least the scintillating finale – to successive generations of French composers.

Throughout, the Polyphonia Ensemble Berlin (all members of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester) play with ideal elegance and emotion. Comparisons are no less interestingly programmed but no one interested in these three pieces should hesitate to explore this rewarding release.