Starting as the impassioned solo violinist in a smoky, seductive performance of Ravel’s Tzigane, Thomas Zehetmair then conducts the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris in an elegantly tailored programme of early-20th-century French classics, most of them – unlike the tempestuous Tzigane – looking back to the refinement of France’s earlier golden age of Couperin and Rameau. Zehetmair and his players set the tone with a lucid, eloquently poised account of the Pavane pour une infante défunte: the music’s instrumental colours, taking a cue from the mellow solo horn of Daniel Catalonotti, are attractively muted but at the same time sensitively defined and melded. Within the texture you can hear the iridescent harp of Emmanuel Ceysson, who is also a positive presence in Tzigane and comes fully into his own in Debussy’s Danse sacrée and Danse profane. Here Classical dignity in the first dance meets what Debussy himself described as the ‘grace’ of the second, with Ceysson’s gorgeous, fluid, beautifully shaped playing being matched by the orchestra’s suppleness and discreetly etched-in spectrum of timbre.

Zehetmair achieves comparable finesse and fluency in Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin and Debussy’s Petite Suite, the latter in Henri Büsser’s familiar orchestration. None of this music is a stranger to the catalogue but these performances are especially strong on style and character, finding a delicate balance between restraint and radiance. Added to that, Ravel’s homage to Debussy in the orchestrations of his confrère’s early ‘Sarabande’ and ‘Danse’ makes for a subtle link and a charming envoi.