Champs Hill Records’ exploration of chamber music byways continues apace, alighting here on four uncomplicated and rather pretty sonatas by Michele Esposito (1855-1929), an Italian from Castelammare di Stabia who spent the bulk of his professional life in Ireland, until retiring to Florence a year before his death. By no means a major composer, he was a major presence in Irish musical life at the time.

The four sonatas given here follow, in the main, conventional formats, either in four movements (the Third for violin) or three (the remainder). As Malcolm Macdonald’s informative booklet essay notes, Esposito was not an innovative composer and these works – composed between the 1880s (no date is given for the G major, Op 32) and 1921 – break no new formal ground, although the finale of the 1899 Cello Sonata is unusual in being in a truncated sonata form. All four are a model of Classical poise, reflecting little of the musical developments of the later 19th century, though his style betrays the influence of Schumann, early Brahms and Fauré.

Mia Cooper and Lance Coburn prove eloquent advocates for the three violin sonatas, the first two of which deserve the attention of violinists generally (No 3 impressed me less, striking me as going through the motions, with some sentimentality, rather than expressing anything new). William Butt has, perhaps, the best of the four, where Esposito achieves a balance between charm and profundity very nicely indeed. Michael Ponder’s sound is beautifully balanced, too, as warm and intimate as the music itself.