The main novelty here is Martin Butler’s Barlow Dale: Four Characteristic Pieces, written in 1977 when the composer was just 17. Inspired by the fictional adventures of a feline detective – Barlow Dale, something of a fusion of Sherlock Holmes, Poirot and Dr Finlay – the pieces depict the eponymous hero, a slow-witted Police Inspector, the elegant (Siamese) secretary Miss Honeyflower, and dastardly villain Asiam Rex. It is all light-hearted fun but how nice to see such a trifle still acknowledged and performed by its creator in this premiere recording four decades later.

In the sonatas by Bax (1934) and Ireland (1943), Butler and clarinettist Nadia Wilson face some stiff competition. The Bax remains popular on disc, if no longer in the recital room, with Naxos and Chandos having multiple versions available. Murray Khouri and Michael Collins (in his earlier recording, in an all-Bax programme for Hyperion) remain joint first choices. Wilson and Butler are quicker by nearly a minute compared to the Hyperion, as they are in Horovitz’s delightful Sonatina (1981). As interpretations, there is not much to choose between them but the main drawback of Prima Facie’s newcomer is the flat acoustic and airless, two-dimensional sound.

Much the same applies for Ireland’s Fantasy-Sonata, an imaginatively constructed single movement with the gravitas of a rather larger work. Wilson and Butler perform it very nicely indeed but, again, this is not the prime recommendation.