I have heard Olivier Riehl’s flute-playing live in concert. It was a humid evening in Paris; despite the audience’s sweaty discomfort, he held the entire hall in rapture with a cadenza that mimicked a bird in flirtatious call. That this disc begins with the ambience of chirping nature, presumably from outside the Église Notre-Dame de Centeilles where this album was recorded last June, is entirely fortuitous. But it is an intriguing counterpoint that calls to question just what makes Riehl’s sound so exquisite (as well as recalling the aesthetic debates of the second half of the 18th century that this repertoire so succinctly explores).

Riehl’s pearly tone, exquisitely carved phrasing and tapered mastery of notes that dissolve into silence; this is stuff beyond birdcall. His chamber partners Amandine Solano (violin) and Cyril Poulet (cello) are equally delightful, and as a threesome they do very well to bring these unknown works by François Devienne to life. There are musical moments, however, beyond rescue – the ornamentation and extreme dynamic scheme in the finale of the Trio in G minor works to foreground the predictability and tedium of it all.

This is where the decision to include trios from the Op 17 collection of the ‘French Mozart’ was wise indeed. The timbral shift from flute to bassoon is most welcome, sweeping froth to the side for liquid mahogany. Xavier Marquis’s playing, particularly in the bass range, is charismatic and peppered with brassy boldness. But he does not quite have the virtuoso flight that some of the scalic passages require to make the listening experience wholly at ease (indeed, sounds of struggle emerge in the Allegro from the Trio No 5 in E flat). Nor is he able to deliver the nuance of conversational freedom in the equivalent passages spoken by Solano’s sprightly bow. Indeed, Solano and Poulet are in many ways the unrecognised stars of this album: consistently vibrant and sources of rhythmic fuel.