Despite a bewilderingly facile interview between the trumpeter and pianist which is, in effect, the complete booklet (one page is dedicated to the quote ‘at the first rehearsal, we gave everything a run-through and soon agreed how we wanted to play them’), this is a trumpet-and-piano recital of real instrumental distinction. Simon Höfele and Elisabeth Brauss respond to each other with astonishing alacrity, whether in the beautiful lyrical exchanges of Karl Pilss’s Straussian Sonata from 1936, the timbral match of the granite Intrada by Honegger or the unrivalled gem of the idiom, Enescu’s Légende, whose glorious piano-writing can only allow the trumpet to fly high.

If the repertoire is a celebration of classical ‘standards’, as so many before – one recalls Carole Dawn Reinhart’s similar programme on DG’s debut label in 1973 – the difference here is that this pair feels like a mainstream string duo in their rich repository of rhetorical tools, tempo fluctuations and dynamic shifts. Höfele is not a player with the warmest of sounds, certainly compared to his distinguished mentor Reinhard Friedrich, but his slightly uncompromising and distant cantabile allows for a kind of noble refinement in his tonal focus. The ravishing second movement of the Pilss is beguilingly still, the only blemish being a spectacular harmonic misreading by the pianist at 3'15".

Intonation in trumpet and piano is usually a contentious issue somewhere in a programme of this kind, but not here. This is about as pristine and controlled a demonstration of brass-playing as you’ll come across. The Hindemith Sonata – one of the composer’s most outstanding chamber works – requires consistently fine production, strength and poise as it reaches its gutting funereal repose on the chorale ‘Alle Menschen müssen sterben’. Jeroen Berwaerts and Alexander Melnikov (Harmonia Mundi, 3/15) are hard to beat for musical depth but this reading, again with clarity and studied distillation, offers a measured perspective that will appeal to many. This is certainly a ‘new cool’ approach to solo classical trumpet-playing. Impressive if emotionally contained.