All four works here are premiere recordings – two only in transcription – and the major item is without doubt the Sonata by the great cellist Gaspar Cassadó (1897-1966), who seems never to have recorded it. Cast in four movements, this is not the same piece as Cassadó’s more familiar Sonata in Ancient Spanish Style but a full-blooded portrait of his native Spain opening with an evocative ‘Rapsodia’, followed by a lively ‘Aragonesa’, a gentle ‘Saeta’ and rousing ‘Paso-doble’ to conclude.

Cellist Nada Radulovich is the transcriber for Tchaikovsky’s enchanting Six French Songs (1888), originally written for the Belgian soprano Désirée Artôt-Padilla. Radulovich’s arrangements catch their lyricism and charm and her performance tends to the fleeter end of the spectrum (accounts of the vocal set run anywhere between 15 and 20 minutes). The largest single span, at 10'38", is provided by the well-crafted but otherwise unremarkable Romantic Fantasy (1966) of the Ukrainian Antin Rudnytsky (1902 75), whose dates confirm him as a contemporary of Shostakovich, something in no way apparent from the ultra-conservative idiom.

Radulovich and Bryant’s playing is sensitive and well shaped throughout, as one would expect from a duo with ‘years of collaboration’ together. Where the disc is let down is in Radulovich’s intonation and the hard, unsympathetic sound. The cello tone sounds edgy, thin and sometimes out of tune with Bryant’s piano, marring the rendering of the Tchaikovsky and Bryant’s arrangement for cello and piano of the ubiquitous Flight of the Bumblebee, a reworking created specifically for her. This is not so much of a distraction in the Sonata and Fantasy, perhaps because of the music’s unfamiliarity. A shame.