The latest album from Diana Ambache’s own label explores six works written between 1861 and 1952, and quietly reminds us of the marginalisation of female composers during the Romantic and modernist periods in France, as indeed elsewhere. Of the six, only Lili Boulanger is primarily remembered for her compositional output. We think of Viardot-Garcia as singer, mistress and muse before turning to her music, while Tailleferre is rarely considered away from her male colleagues in Les Six. Of Claude Arrieu, Louise Farrenc and Mel (or Mélanie) Bonis we hear nothing much at all.

The disc is, however, variable in content. Farrenc’s 1861 Cello Sonata, indebted to Mendelssohn and Schumann, is unremarkable except for its swaying central Barcarolle, and the pastoral-neoclassical blend of Arrieu’s Reed Trio (1936) isn’t always ideally successful. Ambache compares Bonis – in whom both sexual and religious impulses ran strong – to Messiaen, though one is more frequently reminded of Debussy, her fellow composition pupil: Scènes de la forêt (1907), the disc’s real find, opens in imitation of Pelléas, though the best of it has some of the grave eloquence of Boulanger’s 1911 Nocturne. The bravura Hispanicism of Viardot-Garcia’s Sonatine (1874) anticipates Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole. Tailleferre’s beautifully scored 1952 Concertino has charm, sophisticated elegance and a central Nocturne of considerable sensuality.

Technically accomplished and refined as always, Ambache proves a persuasive guide to this repertory, though there are occasional inequalities elsewhere. Rebecca Knight, though excellent, doesn’t make the case for Farrenc’s Sonata. We’re not told which violinist is playing which work, and Boulanger’s Nocturne gets a finer performance than Viardot-Garcia’s Sonatine, where you notice some abrasion in the tone. Scènes de la forêt is really a work for flute and two accompanists rather than a unified trio, and Anthony Robb shines in it, as indeed he also does in Tailleferre’s Concertino. The recording itself is exemplary and beautifully engineered.