The flautist Emmanuel Pahud has here devised a delightful disc exploiting the distinctive combination of flute and clarinet, something evidently fascinating to French composers in particular. The sequence of compact multi-movement works by Florent Schmitt, Darius Milhaud, André Jolivet and Maurice Emmanuel is framed by waltzes by Shostakovich, both of them deliciously lilting, and a chattering and quirky duo by Villa-Lobos, his Chôros No 2. It is a fun disc that plainly gave joy to the performers, as it will to listeners.

That the performers are close friends of Pahud helps to bring the sort of give-and-take between them that results in musical magic. The Schmitt Trio for flute, clarinet and piano (or harpsichord) is a charming, neo-classical piece in four very compact movements, leading to the most substantial piece on the disc, the Milhaud Sonata, which adds an oboe to the basic trio of instruments. This is a piece dating from 1918 when the composer was attached to the French legation in Rio. Like other works of the period it picks up echoes of Brazilian folk music in melody and rhythm, while also paying the occasional tribute to the Stravinsky of Petrushka and The Rite of Spring in its polytonal writing. The outer movements, by far the longest, frame two brief fast movements, with the final slow movement, Douloureux, suggesting the grim tread of a funeral march.

Jolivet’s three-movement Sonatine, like the Villa-Lobos piece, which dispenses with the piano, is effectively written, while Maurice Emmanuel’s Sonata Trio most attractively – although less adventurously – sounds rather like early Ravel.