Entitled ‘The Rascal and the Sparrow: Poulenc meets Piaf’, Antonio Pompa-Baldi presents an irresistible ‘conversation between two icons’. Cabaret and concert hall combine, principally in arrangements of Poulenc songs by Pompa-Baldi and ‘elaborations’ of Edith Piaf by Roberto Piana. A treasure chest of delights, this is a richly inclusive view of Parisian life, of joy and torment, of love lost and found. Only in a few items is there a more clichéd slant, of swinging down the Champs-Elysées, cane in hand, beret coquettishly tilted. But even here Pompa-Baldi’s playing is so stylish and assured that the most facile offering becomes delectable.

Elsewhere, the opening ‘Les chemins de l’amour’ – ‘a torch song burning with long-lost love’ – is unforgettable, its waltz rhythm conveying pain rather than gaiety. The last of the 15 Improvisations (‘Hommage à Edith Piaf’) is given by Pompa-Baldi with such sumptuous colour and inflection that it haunts you ‘long after it is heard no more’. How he makes you wait for the start of each tirelessly repeated phrase, a seductive nuance that suggests total empathy with the idiom. Then there is the inevitable ‘La vie en rose’, where Piaf’s unforgettable intensity is wreathed round in extravagant decoration. There are wry and affectionate memories of Chopin (his Mazurkas) in ‘Le départ’ and ‘Le dernier mazour’, and a final frolic, ‘Vous n’écrivez plus?’ that would have appealed to Jacques Tati. Again, no praise could be high enough for Pompa-Baldi’s pianism, which is of an endlessly enticing elegance and finesse. He is excellently recorded; and if you hear him in Poulenc’s 15th Improvsation (tr 2) I guarantee that unless you are a puritan you will be lost forever.