Previous releases by Les Vents Français have tended to concentrate on ensemble pieces, trios, quintets and so on, with occasional contributions by their ‘house pianist’, Éric Le Sage. Sonatas feature rarely – Beethoven’s for horn being a notable exception – so this new all-Hindemith album featuring five of his sonatas for solo woodwind instruments (those for cor anglais, horn, and alto saxophone are omitted here) with Le Sage’s accompaniment presents the group in a different, soloistic light.

Albums of solo sonatas are nothing unusual, of course, even for Hindemith’s three-dozen-plus catalogue, and there are some collections of those for winds currently listed on the Presto Classical database. However, no rival replicates the five collated here, with the rarer Sonata for Althorn (or tenor horn – not ‘alto horn’, which term is an error – 1943) replacing that for French horn (1939) in the mix. Even if there were, it would be hard to imagine five better-blown accounts of what are among the cream of Hindemith’s instrumental output. Emmanuel Pahud’s rendition of the lovely Flute Sonata (1936) is immaculate in all departments, his tone and grasp of musical flow inviting comparison with Rampal’s pioneering, much-reissued account from the 1950s; Warner Classics’ sound is, of course, immeasurably finer.

Much the same holds for the best of the individual rivals, some of which are listed below. BIS’s recordings for Alexander Ogrintchouk in the Oboe Sonata and (rather older) for Knut Sønstevold in the Bassoon Sonata (both 1938) remain strong competitors, though the former is a mixed-composer programme that will appeal to a different audience to the latter’s all-Hindemith programme with a wide variety of performers. Leleux and Audin are scarcely less beguiling here than their rivals. CPO’s disc with Ensemble Incanto focuses on Hindemith’s chamber output for clarinet, but Meyer’s new account of the lovely Clarinet Sonata (1939) here is, for my money, the market leader. There is nothing to choose between Vlatković and Le Sage in the engaging Althorn Sonata compared with Zwart’s and Melnikov’s that I reviewed in 2015. With top-notch sound, Les Vents Français, with Le Sage’s masterly accompaniments, are the pick of the crop: Vive Les Vents’ Hindemith!