Jean Françaix’s chamber music, whose great charm is difficult to analyse, is delightfully French, with its wit, lightness of touch, quixotic changing of moods, and blending of colours. It is most sympathetically played here, helped by a believable balance, with each wind group felicitously blended. The concert opens with attractive, typically diverse Variations on a ‘pleasing theme’, introduced by Diana Ambache on the piano. It is taken up by a chirping first variation on the flutes, with a whiff of a tango, then in Var 2 is passed on to a languorous bassoon, and leads in Var 3 to a brief woodwind-and-piano scherzo, before the mellow piano returns and dominates tranquilly when joined by the oboe in Var 4. Var 5 continues the mood poignantly. Var 6 is Gershwinesque; then the music moves, in Var 7, via the whole ensemble, to a fetching waltz in Var 8 for piano and flutes, and on to the slightly grotesque hurdy-gurdy finale, all but dominated by contrabassoon.

The Quatuor is scored for cor anglais, violin, viola and cello, opening frivolously but with the soloist then moving from doleful introspection to rhythmic gaiety, and to melancholy and back. The Sixtuor opens in an even more irreverent style, with interplay between three different trios of soloists. The 5/4 Scherzo is rhythmically unpredictable; then comes a sample of the composer’s individual harmonic style, with a gentle duo between flute and bassoon, joined by an oboe. The Elégie, written for the lower instruments, is a haunting commemoration of Mozart. In complete contrast, the infectious L’Heure du Berger vividly pictures the chattering of a restaurant’s customers and the staff who scurry to serve them all. Altogether a most infectious and enjoyable collection.