This programme was designed, we’re told in the booklet note, to explore the relationship between the colour blue and the emotional meanings of blue (‘blue notes, feeling blue’), although the emphasis here is on ‘a bittersweet melancholy’ or ‘happy nostalgia’.

I might think of melancholy in regards to Chopin’s Cello Sonata – or portions of it, at least – but I don’t think it’s particularly nostalgic. I’m happy to say, however, that cellist Pauline Buet and pianist David Violi don’t wallow in order to prove a point, and there’s much to enjoy in their performance. I quite like Buet’s dusky tone, which suggests to me a chanteuse who’s smoked for decades yet still has plenty of velvet in her sound. And Violi elegantly negotiates the dense piano part – listen, say, to his delicate touch at 12'20" in the first movement. They bring an attractive earthiness to the mazurka-like Scherzo, although they remain earthbound in the Trio section where others – Weilerstein and Barnatan (Decca, 11/15), for instance – take flight. The finale, too, can be a little heavy-going.

Buet and Violi’s performance of Poulenc’s Sonata is generally more satisfying, despite some stodginess in the first movement’s introduction. Note Buet’s magically watery arpeggios at 1'49" in the ‘Cavatine’ and the wry smile both players bring to the ‘Ballabile’. Poulenc’s Mélancolie, an exquisite piano miniature, serves as an interlude between the sonatas, and an arrangement of the second of the Métamorphoses is a postlude of sorts. The encore is one of French singer-songwriter Barbara’s biggest hits, here sung very much to the manner born by the cellist. In fact, as much as I enjoyed Camélia Jordana’s breathy, intimate interpretation on Alexandre Tharaud’s two-disc homage to Barbara (Erato, 12/17), I’d say that Buet gets even closer to the spirit of the original. And how charming to discover that her voice and cello tone seem to be cut from the same cloth.