Mélanie Harel’s incongruous quest to equip the English horn with wings – ‘Envols’ translates as ‘flights’ – results in a curiously superb if mostly low-key recital.

There is little of the glamorous solos she plays as principal in Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s Orchestre Métropolitain, although Sibelius’s The Swan of Tuonela makes an appearance in Brian Cherney’s moving Epitaph; this recital more often frequents soft, dark corners such as those in the first movement of Christopher Tyler Nickel’s Sonata, with its distant rumble of thunder caused by the pianist brushing the piano strings with the palms of her hands.

Emily Doolittle’s Social Sounds from Whales at Night uses percussion and electronic sounds to create a keening world for which the English horn might have been invented, both above and under water; it clearly resonates with Harel, who dived ‘hundreds of times’ while she was principal with the Malaysian Philharmonic.

But the most striking evidence of the English horn taking flight is François-Hugues Leclair’s exhilarating Le vol de l’épervier (‘Flight of the hawk’), originally created for dance, and recorded in the magnificent Saint-Sauveur forest with birdsong and other nature sounds.

In every piece, the instrument and the playing have an absorbing intensity – as in Stewart Grant’s three fascinating Études, especially ‘Grands jetés’, which sets Harel off on a series of eloquent leaps, Tawnie Olson’s questioning Plainsong, and Paul Marshall Douglas’s Luquet, which basks in the warmth of the Occitan sun.