Chausson’s Concert for violin, piano and string quartet is the only big work on this two-CD set, and it’s given here in a new arrangement for violin, piano and string orchestra. In the booklet note, Daniel Hope tells James Jolly that the composer’s own augmentation of his well-known Poème for an identical ensemble (violin, piano and string orchestra) served as a model. Hope’s case is compelling but there’s an essential difference: the Poème is a showpiece for solo violin while the Concert is a chamber work, with violin and piano in an equal partnership.

There are moments in this performance where Hope’s adaptation reaps rewards – the churning bass line near the end of the Grave, for instance (starting at 8'44"), or at the beginning of the finale, where the basses add a welcome sense of depth. In general, however, I find that the massed strings can overheat music that’s often at the boiling point already. Indeed, intimacy is one of the charms of this highly unusual Concert. Try, say, the lilting Sicilienne, played with exquisite delicacy by Hope and pianist Lise de la Salle, where the added heft throws the music off balance.

Hope’s programme is in two parts. The first (disc 1), featuring the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, begins with the Chausson and concludes with Elgar’s stirring Introduction and Allegro (not exactly music one associates with the Belle Époque, although it’s contemporaneous). In between we have a selection of contemplatively lyrical works, including Debussy’s Rêverie, Massenet’s Méditation from Thaïs and Elgar’s Chanson de matin (in an unusually passionate, almost overwrought performance). The result is an odd sandwich, with what sounds like a ‘classical relaxation’ playlist slipped between two hefty, carbohydrate-rich slabs.

The second part (disc 2) is made up almost entirely of miniatures for violin and piano (here with Simon Crawford-Phillips at the keyboard), although a few other instruments make demure guest appearances. What’s curious is how, despite the diverse array of composers selected, the overall mood (again) feels so consistently and prettily reflective. There are a few surprises, like Zemlinsky’s Serenade, which is what I’d imagine Austrian hoedown music to be like. I appreciated that Hope follows it with a set of rarely heard pieces by Koechlin, whose Scherzando movement displays a strikingly similar, smiling rusticity. Although these are salon pieces, for the most part, there are moments that jump out for their depth of feeling. The Andante of the Koechlin, for example, exudes aching loneliness, and nearly every phrase ends with an audible wince.

Hope and Crawford-Phillips play everything ravishingly but their performance of Ravel’s early Sonate posthume (at 14 minutes, the one largish work) deserves special mention, so supple the music seems to move like a living, breathing being. Listen to the coda, which, in their hands, is delicate as a sigh, then to the fragility of Webern’s Op 7 (the closing work), where in the second piece they find Ravelian splashes of colour. All in all, then, a peculiarly balanced yet rewarding programme.