You almost imagine that Saint-Saëns had the Capuçon brothers in mind when he considerately added to his repertoire of solo violin and cello concertos a piece that brought both instruments together. La Muse et le poète is fairly late Saint-Saëns, composed in 1909, long after the A minor Cello Concerto (1872) and the Third Violin Concerto (1880), but it amply reveals that his creative powers remained undimmed. It is, in part, a reflective piece, music of quiet reverie in which the violin assumes the role of the Muse stimulating the cello’s poetic thoughts. These are, to begin with, meditatively lyrical, but, at the work’s centre and again at the very end, the greater degree of agitation looks back to the virtuosity and thrill of the solo concertos.

Saint-Saëns conceived La Muse et le poète as a ‘conversation between two individuals’ rather than a concerto tussle, and it is precisely that intimate dialogic quality that comes through in Renaud and Gautier Capuçon’s beautifully modulated playing. This is complemented by the discreet colouring, finesse, warmth and dramatic cohesion that Lionel Bringuier draws from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. La Muse et le poète is by no means new to the catalogue but this is an especially distinguished, affecting but unaffected performance of it, and the disc is rendered even more appealing by the polished, dynamic interpretations of the concertos either side of it. If this music is far more familiar, the freshness, passion and poignancy of the playing are compellingly revivifying.