Frank Peter Zimmermann and Heinrich Schiff have been a musical item for more than two decades and the fruits of their mutual understanding are audible from the outset of Honegger’s Sonatina, which opens a typically wide-ranging and challenging ECM programme. Both players have an instinctive feeling for line which serves Honegger’s robust polyphony well, lifting his melodies off the page. The same is true in Martinu’s First Duo, where a mysterious Preludium is succeeded by a lively, warm-hearted Rondo in which players catch the Czech tang through the overlay of French gloss.

They face fierce competition in the one true French item, Ravel’s Sonata. The reissued Juillet-Mørk (Decca, 12/96R) gives perhaps the most classically balanced account; Kennedy and Harrell (EMI, 5/00) provide a slower, more dramatic performance. Zimmermann and Schiff are by far the fleetest, coming in over a minute ahead of either rival. Perhaps a shade too quick in the Lent, in the faster movements their impulsion is irresistible.

Between these peaks of early-20th-century repertoire come two Bach canons from The Art of Fugue and a new commission from Matthias Pintscher (b1971). The Bach canons are delivered with consummate skill, as one expects, while Pintscher’s ethereal vision, inspired by Cy Twombly’s art, casts a wholly different light on their musicality. With state-of-the-art sound, is this the best violin-and-cello duo disc around? I think it might be.