The chamber music of Jean Françaix is unaccountably neglected and it is opportune that MDG have decided to reissue the Charis Ensemble’s collection at the same time as the new Bergen performances of the earlier light-hearted works have appeared. The composer himself gave his imprimatur to this group but the Bergen Quintet play with no less felicity. There is a nice mixture of whimsy throughout all these pieces, plus a gentle melancholy that is wholly individual.

That is immediately felt at the opening of the First Wind Quintet, before the music danses off skittishly, followed by an equally infectious Presto. The melancholy mood returns in the engaging Tema con variazione and the closing Tempo di marcia francese brings a genially wild conclusion. The gently innocent Preludio of the Second Quintet (written much later) changes the mood yet again, to be followed by another bustling Scherzando. The Andante is more cheerful and the melancholy reserved for the cor anglais solo, but the spirited finale hardly takes itself seriously at all. The Wind Quartet is an early student work, dating from 1933, but no less typical, and the composer recognised his own skill in achieving what he described as ‘a fusion of Machiavelli and magic’. The most striking movement in the Divertissement is the introspectively grave Elégie but once again the finale has an enticing gaiety, yet now underpinned by an undercurrent of reflective feeling.

About the Clarinet Quintet Françaix commented that ‘here the earthen pot risked a collision with the diamond vessel of WA Mozart’ and yet it opens with a touchingly exquisite Adagio and, after a delectably light-hearted and characteristic Scherzando, moves to a heart-wrenching Grave before the bubbling finale. The Octet, the composer suggested, might serve a gap in a Viennese programme which also offered Schubert’s masterpiece, and perhaps its sad opening reflects that composer’s early departure from the world, before the following Allegrissimo and the equally vigorous Scherzo evoke the light-hearted spirit of much of his music. The third movement is touchingly nostalgic and the work ends with an enchanting Viennese Mouvement de valse. In its second-movement Lento, the Divertimento for bassoon and string quartet catches the darker colour we associate with this instrument but is deliciously jocular in the finale and its virtuosity is readily caught by Stephan Rüdiger. All in all, these two discs offer a cornucopia of very French-flavoured music, which is superbly played by both groups.