This is barely a commercial CD as one usually understands it. Olivier Darbellay may be the prime focus, having won the Young Soloist of the Year competition in 2000 – awarded by four French-language public radio networks – and yet presentation is as much focused on the competition’s profile. Documentation is scant; the programme turns out to be a mish-mash of performances given between 1998 and 2000. Strauss’s First Horn Concerto in its original version for horn and piano confirms its competition provenance, not dissimilar to what you’d expect in a BBC Young Musician final before the big orchestral event.

With all that in mind, Darbellay proves to be a good player as you’d expect from the winner of a competition whose previous victors include Emmanuel Pahud and Thierry Félix. His tone is strong and true, with effortless ease in all registers, a fluid and beguiling sense of line as well as a light and alert articulation in the Strauss (which I admit rather enjoying in its reductive state, despite a boxy recorded sound). His Schumann Adagio and Allegro has dollops of natural bravura and the requisite lyricism, although there is the odd tendency to sharpness in the upper register, as indeed one hears in the Glière.

The final work by Jean-Luc Darbellay (the soloist’s father) is energetic if largely inconsequential. Despite Cascavelle’s parochial promotional concept, talent spotters will want to keep a track of Darbellay junior’s progress .