This is a album of great charm, though it’s very much aimed at a French-speaking audience, which inevitably will limit its appeal. Le carnaval des animaux doesn’t, of course, need a narrator, though here it acquires a text by the Belgian comedian Alex Vizorek, who also prefaces Danse macabre with the poem by Henri Cazalis that inspired it. He has great fun with it all, affectionately parodying French classical verse by writing in alexandrines (‘Chers enfants, chers parents, préparez vos oreilles’ is the first line), playing games with the metre to approximate Saint-Saëns’s lumbering tortoises and launching into vers libre to introduce the erratically bouncing kangaroos. It’s sweet and funny, and if you speak French, you’ll probably prefer it to Ogden Nash’s familiar, albeit dreadfully arch English version.

Musically it’s lovely, too. Lucie Leguay opts for the orchestral version rather than the 11-instrument original. The playing combines elegance with panache, textures are clean, clear and beautifully teased out, and we’re really aware of the originality of Saint-Saëns’s orchestral writing throughout. The pianists, meanwhile, virtuoso and brilliant, are the Duo Jatekok. On their own they give us Danse macabre in a breezy four-hand transcription by Wendy Hiscocks rather than Saint-Saëns’s own, weightier two-piano version (I wanted the orchestral version here), and are also the soloists in a terrific performance of Poulenc’s Concerto for two pianos, playing with devil-may-care energy, rhythmic precision and fine attention to detail, while Leguay gets the balance between urbanity and nostalgia absolutely right.