Franco-Romanian violinist Sarah Nemtanu, leader of the Orchestre National de France as well as a fine soloist in her own right, examines her dual cultural heritage in her engaging new album with pianist Romain Descharmes, which places George Enescu alongside his French contemporaries. Enescu’s Impressions d’enfance forms the disc’s centrepiece, flanked by the Debussy and Ravel sonatas (Enescu premiered the latter) together with a handful of shorter works. Nino Rota’s 1969 Improvviso, unrelated to the rest of it, serves as a bravura encore after the main programme is over.

Playing with considerable subtlety, they avoid self-conscious bravado until they get to the Rota, and Descharmes’s clarity and elegance offsets Nemtanu’s warmth of tone and poised interpretative restraint throughout. Impressions d’enfance itself, Enescu’s musical memoir of his village childhood, is beautifully done, with Nemtanu secure yet unshowy in the exacting cadenza (depicting a village fiddle player) with which it opens, and Descharmes deploying careful gradations of colour and dynamics in Enescu’s evocations of the sad figure of the local beggar and the brook that flows through the family’s garden. The narrative trajectory, in which day yields to a stormy night then a glorious sunrise, is scrupulously plotted. Some may prefer the greater vividness of Gidon Kremer and Oleg Maisenberg in this work (Teldec, 7/97), but there’s a reflective, nostalgic quality to the new recording that proves both touching and persuasive.

Though extremely fine, the sonatas arouse more mixed feelings. The Debussy is clear and detailed (the central ‘Intermède’ really is fantasque et léger), and the complex mix of ambiguity, delicacy and strength is deftly captured, though I prefer the deeper emotional resonances and slightly wider colouristic range of Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov here (Harmonia Mundi, 11/18). The central ‘Blues’ of the Ravel Sonata takes time to gather momentum – the beginning is disarmingly low-key – though the outer movements are splendid, with lyricism and wit perfectly balanced in the Allegretto and irresistible energy in the perpetuum mobile finale. The sweeping phrases of Enescu’s early Impromptu concertant, indebted to Fauré, allow Nemtanu to display a wonderful sweetness of tone in her violin’s upper registers. Ysaÿe’s Rêve d’enfant, meanwhile, is classy salon music, stylishly done.