The pianist Nicolas Kruger, writing in this CD’s booklet, makes a pertinent point about the Poème de l’amour et de la mer, Chausson’s settings of verses by Maurice Bouchor. The lavish orchestral specifications, he says, preclude its appearing with any regularity on concert programmes, while in the piano version he is “frustrated by the piano’s lack of resources to convey [the music’s] full breadth and richness”. On disc there have been no such problems, with notable recordings of the orchestral score featuring Jessye Norman (Erato), Shirley Verrett (Warner), Janet Baker (EMI) and Montserrat Caballé (Collins). But Kruger’s solution to opening up the work’s potential in the concert hall has been to commission from Franck Villard a new transcription of the instrumental part for piano and string quartet, matching the line-up of Chausson’s Charles Cros settings in the Chanson perpétuelle. It is thoroughly convincing, and is one of the particular pleasures of this disc. By contrast, while the Manfred Quartet gives a polished, fluid performance of the String Quartet, Op 35, it is one of those works in which it is very easy to lose interest, its recourse to the techniques of late Beethoven providing technical fodder but its sanguine harmonic slitherings giving insufficient support to the unassertive thematic material. Chausson was much better with a poetic image in mind, and the fusion of Wagnerian luxuriance and Gallic finesse in the two vocal works allows the soprano Salomé Haller ample scope for expressive poignancy and rapture.