This album beautifully showcases exactly the contrasts – the surprising varieties of light and shade – that we expect from Fauré: ethereal melodies, surprising harmonies and contrasts of tone colour and articulation. The pairing here is perfectly matched; their beautiful tone, up-close and also whirling around in space, comes across superbly well.

Xavier Phillips and Cédric Tiberghien waste no time in jumping into the D minor First Sonata, at once bold and muscular, mellifluous and iridescent. They have also not held back on their CD release: a lovely hardcover booklet.

I spoke of an up-close sound: the intimacy of the musicians and microphone is such that you are brought close enough to hear their breathing. Great sound engineers do say that they like to hear a human being present, not just a rarefied, mechanised sound. Here, Aline Blondiau from record label La Dolce Volta has created a scintillating sound world. Both the tonal and musical qualities of the first few tracks had me convinced, but the rest of the album doesn’t disappoint. The Élégie and Sérénade are fiery and lyrical in turn; both are linked to cellist Pablo Casals, a friend and champion of Fauré, and I’m intrigued by the link between these two imposing figures of early 20th-century music making.

For ‘Après un rêve’, one of Fauré’s most famous chansons, the duo here use the Casals transcription. All the more reason to take note of the fact that we have recordings of Casals playing this from 1926, as well as the Élégie in 1956, and that he gave the first performance of the Élégie in 1901 and was the dedicatee of the Sérénade. Listeners may well be interested to hear what Casals does with the scores of the French master, especially the lilting freedom of ‘Après un rêve’.

But, of course, it’s not all about the cello. Cédric Tiberghien does a truly beautiful job of filling the role that Fauré himself often took on, for instance at the 1883 premiere of the Élégie. Here, the filigree of the floating melodies is perfectly contrasted with the stormy aggression of the climactic moments. The equal pairing and collaboration are clear here – apposite for a duo who bonded over a shared lifelong love of the music of Fauré.

If I may be allowed one small reservation, there could perhaps be a bit more grit to this at times. It would add some spice to what is an undeniably beautifully crafted gamut of flavours; to quote a conversation I had with some colleagues recently, it is necessary to have a piece of sand in the oyster, some resistance around which the pearl will undoubtedly form.