The idea for this disc arose from these performers’ shared love of Janáček’s music. Laura van der Heijden – 2012’s BBC Young Musician of the Year – and Anglesey-born Jâms Coleman have been performing together since 2018. Janáček’s delightful, multilayered triptych Pohádka (‘Fairy tale’, 1909 10), which opens the disc, formed part of their first duo recital. More crucially, their desire to play the Violin Sonata (1914, rev 1916 22) led van der Heijden to adapt, very adroitly, the violin part for the cello and provide a gripping close to their programme. In between lie Kodály’s wonderful duo Sonata (1909 10, a direct contemporary of Pohádka) and Sonatina (1909), Mihály’s gripping Mouvement of 1963 – honouring Kodály’s 80th birthday, though the date suggests he was a year late! – plus adaptations by van der Heijden of four songs by Dvořák, Kodály and Kaprálová. The works form an expressive arc travelling from innocence (Pohádka) to the chastened experience (via the Great War) of Janáček’s Sonata.

As a creative concept, it is carried through convincingly. The players clearly share a tangible musical understanding and rapport, and catch Pohádka’s ambivalent quality very neatly (after all, are not all fairy tales child-friendly glosses on darker terrors?). Their technical prowess comes to the fore in Kodály’s Sonata, the two movements of which contain a wealth of expression, albeit with no declared programme. The Mihály Mouvement is a challenge of an even greater kind – the composer was a cellist as well as being a fine conductor and composer – but both players take its formidable demands in their stride.

The song arrangements – straightforward adaptations of the vocal lines down an octave – make marvellous contrast, bringing different shades of light and lightness (as does the Kodály Sonatina) into a programme that might otherwise tend to shade, despite Chandos’s trademark rich sound. The performances are very fine throughout.