All five works here are overshadowed by war. Hindemith’s Sonata, although it opens confidently, includes a second movement which has a touchingly lyrical thoughtfulness. It moves into the finale from a scherzando, and the feeling of the music becomes deeper, more thoughtful, before the brief final fugato, which is more ambivalent. The theme to which Britten allots his Temporal Variations is undoubtedly evocative but the ‘March’ seems a parody of militarism, and the quiet ‘Chorale’ of the eighth variation is even more introspective. There is then an ironic, goose-stepping ‘Polka’ before the desolate resolution. The Hungarian composer/conductor Antal Dorati wrote his Duo concertante for Heinz Holliger and András Schiff, and in the first movement it too has its inner thoughts about world conflict rising doubtfully to the surface in a sad soliloquy, although it seems to be swept away by the piquant closing gypsy dance.

Pavel Haas makes a central point for this recital, for he was at first sent to a concentration camp and then to Auschwitz in 1944. His Suite begins furioso and continues con fuoco but ends reflectively. To show his patriotism he quotes the ‘Hussite Song’ and the ‘Wenceslas Chorale’ in the course of the work. Paul Ben-Heim avoided the fate of Pavel Haas by emigrating to Palestine in 1933. He described his Three Songs Without Words as ‘oriental tone-pictures’, the first picturing a summer’s day in the bare Judean Hills, while the finale is truly seraphic.

All this music is superbly played here, with the sensitive oboist Alexei Ogrintchouk dominating as he must, and the anthology, published at a time when we are all remembering the war, has an atmosphere of its own.