‘A Room of Her Own’ continues the Neave Trio’s exploration of works by female composers begun four years ago with ‘Her Voice’ (11/19). The title derives from Virginia Woolf, in acknowledgement, one suspects (we are not explicitly told), of her relationship with Ethel Smyth, whose 1880 D minor Trio is the grandest in scale of the works included here. Its companion pieces are all French. Chaminade’s G minor Trio, written for herself as pianist, similarly dates from 1880. Lili Boulanger’s two pieces, intended as a diptych, were composed in 1917 18, roughly contemporaneously with Tailleferre’s Trio from 1916 17, though Tailleferre radically revised it in 1978, towards the end of her life.

Smyth’s Trio is invariably described, or indeed dismissed, as Brahmsian, though taken on its own terms it is a notably beautiful work, formally rigorous yet lyrical. The Neave’s way with it is expansive, with an attractive warmth of tone in the interlocking string phrases of the outer movements and playing at once weighty and admirably restrained from pianist Eri Nakamura. There’s plenty of subtle detail in the Andante’s ornate variations on a theme that Smyth dubbed ‘The Courage of Simplicity’, and the Scherzo, with its filigree piano-writing, is done with nicely understated panache.

The same expansiveness is much in evidence elsewhere, arguably with more ambiguous results. It brings out qualities of nostalgia and sadness beneath the grace and surface charm of the Chaminade Trio, and the fierce way Nakamura launches the Allegro molto agitato finale takes you back a bit after the bittersweet triple-time elegance of much that has preceded it. We’re in very different territory here from the airy brilliance and dash of the Parnassus Trio’s rival version (Dabringhaus und Grimm, 7/17).

The spaciousness works less well with the Tailleferre, however, where the first movement dawdles a bit and the second, impishly hovering between folk music and Baroque, seems oddly heavy-footed: I much prefer the greater brightness and neoclassical poise of the Trio Karénine (Mirare). The Boulanger pieces, written shortly before her death, are superbly done, though. The feverish quality the Neave bring to ‘D’un matin de printemps’ tellingly undermines its breeziness, and the funereal tread, tolling piano chords and deliberately bleached string sound of ‘D’un soir triste’ prove genuinely unsettling. Not a perfect disc, perhaps, but the best of it is very fine.