According to Isabelle Rouard’s booklet note, Ignaz Moscheles described Chopin’s Cello Sonata as like ‘a wild overgrown forest, into which only an occasional sunbeam penetrates’. And, indeed, it sounds that way all too often – but not here. Jean-Guihen Queyras and Alexander Melnikov somehow manage to contain the overgrowth and shape the profusion of ideas into a cultivated and warmly lit musical garden. It helps a great deal that they phrase in such a way that one is rarely aware of beats or bar lines, and that their rubato follows the music’s natural push and pull. Note, say, how they handle the soft cadential flourish at 2'21" in the opening Allegro moderato, which puts me in mind of jazz musicians’ ruminations.

Yet theirs is a reading of lyrical urgency, too. In the Largo, both cellist and pianist take their time with the melodic ornaments to expressive effect, as a singer would, and they register harmonic delights and surprises without undue fuss – listen at 2'53" in the finale where, after wandering around E minor and A minor, the music suddenly slips into the remote key of B flat. Melnikov plays his own 1885 Érard piano here, and I prefer it to Dénes Várjon’s 1851 Érard (on his recording with Isserlis – Hyperion, 10/18), as its tone is more focused and brilliant yet still has the transparency that allows Queyras to be heard clearly.

For the Rachmaninov, Melnikov employs a Steinway, yet his playing is so finely chiselled that, again, the piano doesn’t overpower. This is especially impressive as Harmonia Mundi’s engineers have given us what sounds like quite a natural concert-hall perspective with no unnatural spotlight on the cello. I can imagine some listeners wanting a more effusive, heart-on-sleeve interpretation, but I find Queyras and Melnikov’s relative restraint both stylistically apt and utterly satisfying. There’s intense longing (try the opening minute), Rachmaninovian rapture (try at 5'45" in the first movement’s Allegro moderato), and abundant colourful detail (note Queyras’s hoarse whisper at 10'17" in that same movement). And while, on first hearing, I thought their way with the third-movement Andante rather cool, the searing heat of the first climax at 2'50" showed me that their patience could result in spectacular pay-off. Even that gorgeous melody in the finale (first heard at 0'55") is more wonderful to wallow in when played with such noble poise as here. This recording of the Rachmaninov has already been on heavy rotation in my household, and I expect that to continue for several weeks more, at least.