It’s interesting to see what can be achieved with a little bit of imaginative programming. It’s not too much of a leap to pair Niels Gade with the two composers with whom he was on close terms in Leipzig in the 1840s, Mendelssohn and Schumann – and if pressed, I’d probably have described his music as most closely resembling Mendelssohn’s. Yet if this attractive programme from the Phoenix Piano Trio demonstrates anything, it’s Gade’s temperamental kinship to Schumann: that same fondness for short forms, and that balancing act between tender inwardness and headlong, euphoric verve.

The Phoenix Piano Trio capture all those qualities with unaffected freshness and charm, both in Gade’s Novelletten and in Schumann’s relatively more familiar F major Piano Trio. The opening of each of these two works, in fact, is practically supercharged. I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed the recorded sound, which tends towards the bass- and piano-heavy: not ideal in an ensemble that’s as notoriously difficult to balance as a piano trio. Christian Elliott’s cello struggles at times to be heard.

But the ear rapidly adjusted, and it has to be said that in the many passages of lightness, lyricism and delicacy, these performances are thoroughly engaging: the playful lilt of Schumann’s third-movement intermezzo; Sholto Kynoch’s limpid piano-playing in Gade’s Larghetto; and the unforced, plain-spoken tone of the two string players. It’s real chamber music, in other words, though the closing performance of Mendelssohn’s woefully underrated C minor Trio lacks nothing in terms of fantasy or symphonic sweep – and the speed and agility of the Scherzo (one of those fairy music moto perpetuos) positively takes the breath away. In many ways, a rewarding disc.