The Neave Trio are noted for their eclectic choice of repertoire, and here their broad interests once again illuminate unfamiliar territory as they bring Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s rarely heard Five Negro Melodies into a collection of more standard fare. In 1905 Coleridge-Taylor wrote piano transcriptions of 24 folk melodies from Africa, the West Indies and southern American plantations; he later elaborated five of them, recasting the piano part and adding violin and cello. The results, while conservative in style, are skilfully crafted and deeply affecting in their simultaneous expression of loss and hope.

The power of the Coleridge-Taylor is enhanced by its company here. The special characteristics of the folk music at its core are intensified when heard against the very different idioms that anchor Frank Martin’s settings of Irish folk tunes. At the same time, the special flavour of Coleridge-Taylor’s representation of communal grief is brought into focus by hearing it right after Smetana’s more individual expression of the pain that resulted from the death of his young daughter. True, I’m not convinced that the Smetana (or the Suk) is as deeply rooted in folk music as the recording’s publicity and title insist; even so, the programme works well as a whole.

The Neave Trio have drawn mixed reviews, and their latest release helps explain why. The Smetana certainly reflects the romantic sympathy Guy Rickards found in their Beach (11/19), offering more depth and passion than the Beaux Arts version (Philips, 2/72) and more robustness than the Sitkovetsky Trio (BIS, 7/14). And the infectious urgency of the off-kilter syncopations in the rollicking finale of the Suk may well carry you away. Still, that emotionalism is sometimes undermined by a lack of tonal finesse; and the energy comes at some cost to coordination and balance, as both Harriet Smith and Caroline Gill have noted (5/14, 1/17).

On the whole, though, the virtues predominate, and the album’s high points remain longest in your heart: the tread of the funeral march that poignantly interrupts the finale of the Smetana; the supple mournfulness of ‘Sometimes I feel like a motherless child’, which opens the Coleridge-Taylor; the wild abandon of the Martin Trio’s last movement. A collection well worth experiencing.