Something mildly fruity and soft-edged about the piano timbre in Jos van Immerseel’s and Claire Chevallier’s performance of Poulenc’s Two-Piano Concerto immediately tells you that they are not playing on modern Steinways. In fact they are using pre-First World War instruments by Erard, as they did on an earlier disc of two-piano music by Poulenc, Saint-Saëns, Manuel Infante and César Franck. Given that the concerto was written in 1932, the “period” flavour provided by pianos of 1896 and 1904 might be anachronistic but van Immerseel’s reasoning is that they are instruments “of the kind Poulenc will have seen in large numbers in Paris and which he may well have played”. If we are accustomed these days to hearing Poulenc performed with more glint to the tone, the Erards’ mellow French polish does add a warm halo of colour to the central Larghetto, and by no means dampens the joie de vivre of the finale. The orchestral playing is finely moulded to the pianos’ spectrum of sonority so that, after the initial shock of hearing something out of the ordinary, the performance yields up much in finesse, fluency and fun.

There is a similar refinement to the orchestral mix in the “Suite française”, Poulenc’s re‑imagination of music from the 16th century that here conveys all its piquancy of scoring and its blend of agility and elegance. In the Concert champêtre Katerina Chroboková, playing a copy of a mid-18th-century French harpsichord, is deft and delicate in equal measure.