The two works Chopin wrote for cello and piano at either end of his career are here placed in reverse order of composition, with the Grand duo concertante positioned in the middle. The latter was written in 1833 in collaboration with Chopin’s close friend Auguste Franchomme (1808 84), to whom he dedicated his Op 65 Sonata (hence the disc’s title). Franchomme, the leading cellist of his day, who died of a massive heart attack just four days after receiving the Légion d’honneur, also rewrote the cello part of Op 3 and produced a number of transcriptions of Chopin’s works.

It is not these that Beatriz Blanco and Federico Bosco have chosen as the conventional makeweights of this programme but two of Franchomme’s own (rarely heard) compositions. His Three Themes with Variations takes an air by Donizetti, another by Beethoven and a third by Bellini, and presents a short series of variations on each (4'41", 4'24" and 5'43" respectively), attractive, undemanding (for the listener, not the player) and quite unmemorable. Much better is his Duo concertant sur un motif d’Anna Bolena, using another of Donizetti’s melodies and written in collaboration with the Irish composer-pianist George Osborne (1806 93). If you like Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata or Vieuxtemps’s more virtuoso writing for the instrument, then Franchomme is sure to appeal.

Blanco and Bosco are an ideal match (as were the reserved, refined Chopin and Franchomme). Blanco’s unforced, burnished tone is a joy to hear, underpinned by Bosco’s quirky choice of an 1898 Pleyel double piano (two pianos housed in one body, each with its own set of strings and pedals). The plus sides of this are the piquant colours on offer and the jaunty, almost percussive edge it gives to certain sections of the Meyerbeer and Anna Bolena pieces; the downsides are some exposed solo passages at forte and above when the Pleyel sounds like a straight-strung pub piano – not enough to spoil one’s enjoyment of the polished, understated music-making but enough to take your mind off the musical flow for a moment.