Take note of the cover artwork to Laura van der Heijden and Jâms Coleman’s ‘Path to the Moon’, because its image – William T Horton’s print of the same name – was what provided the initial spark for this inventive, beguilingly voiced exploration of ‘works devoted to the moon’s gently alluring, enigmatic and romantic character, and works evoking humankind’s fervent striving for new heights’.

Repertoire-wise, the programme’s triple anchor is three 20th-century cello sonatas: Debussy’s Sonata of 1915, originally enigmatically titled ‘Pierrot angry with the moon’; Britten’s ambitious 1961 Sonata for Rostropovich, premiered by the two men in a concert also featuring the Debussy; and, preceding those two, George Walker’s much-overlooked Sonata from 1957, sounding on the one hand rooted in the European tradition and specifically French-leaning – the dual influence of his Curtis Institute teacher, Samuel Barber, and studies in France under Nadia Boulanger – and alluding on the other hand to his African American heritage through its jazz whispers.

It’s a special treat to have two of the younger generation’s most interesting artists championing the Walker as its existing discography is so very limited. Do look up, if you can, the classily dry, clean-lined recording made by Walker himself with Detroit Symphony principal cellist Italo Babini. Van der Heijden and Coleman are similarly clean, rhythmic and evenly balanced, but with a slightly softer elegance from van der Heijden that’s just as appealing. Notice and enjoy the subtlest ghost of the blues she brings to her voicing in the austere first movement, and their combined tautly hushed, long-lined stillness over the central Sostenuto. Their Debussy has a magically silence-wrapped, lunar quality. In their graceful Britten reading, Coleman’s multicoloured voice is notably compelling in the ‘Elegia’.

The sonatas also work fascinatingly as a trio, dovetailing in all sorts of expressive directions; and when one such dovetail is their strong impression of spoken rhetoric, it’s fitting that the short punctuating works are song transcriptions celebrating the cello’s closeness to the human voice, some familiar, some new and more unexpected. Korngold’s ‘Schönste Nacht’, a waltz song from his overlooked 1946 operetta Die stumme Serenade, is a charmingly eloquent album-opener. Britten’s ‘Sonetto XXX’, from the Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo written for Peter Pears, lifts on to van der Heijden’s cello with poetically intelligent effortlessness. Anyone who thinks they know Takemitsu is in for a surprise with his gently jaunty ‘Will Tomorrow, I Wonder, Be Cloudy or Clear?’. Jonathan King’s ‘Everyone’s gone to the moon’ perhaps doesn’t translate quite so well into wordless cello song but Coleman’s transcription reveals new facets nevertheless, and its title was begging that the attempt be made.

‘Gently alluring, enigmatic and romantic’? Well, tick, tick and tick. Hugely recommended.