Whereas cellists who record CPE Bach’s three cello concertos usually place them together on a single album, Jean-Guihen Queyras and Riccardo Minasi have chosen to spread them over two – the A major and A minor works coupled with the best of his symphonies (7/18), and the B flat middle work of the triptych on this new recording, coupled with the sole published concerto by Anton Kraft.

Kraft (1749-1820) had quite the life. He became Haydn’s principal cellist in the Esterházy orchestra in 1778 and has long been thought to have been the recipient of Haydn’s D major Cello Concerto. He played Mozart’s Divertimento, K563, to the composer. Later he was part of the group from which the Schuppanzigh Quartet emerged, and as such he played in the first performances of a number of Beethoven’s early chamber works, and was part of the trio for whom the Triple Concerto was written.

‘Contemporary sources’, declares The New Grove, ‘note his beautiful tone, technical ease and expressive playing’, and all these attributes are evident in his C major Concerto. Supposedly published around 1804, it leans more towards the style of Haydn than that of Beethoven, but it’s no slight work, trumpets and drums giving it a grandeur befitting the expansive, martial opening movement and the Cossack rondo with which it closes. It’s a fine show-off work for a cellist of Queyras’s calibre and well worth hearing.

Ensemble Resonanz – period manners on (mainly) modern instruments – once again provide confident, driving accompaniment, both in the Kraft and in the more genteel, lyrical B flat Concerto of CPE Bach, a harpsichord in prominent support. Charlotte Gardner expressed a clear recommendation for the earlier volume and this follow-up matches it in every way, both for its sheer class and for its intriguing coupling.