A sepia postcard framing the artists, a red rose lying alongside it, illustrates the booklet of ‘Le temps retrouvé’, a valentine from the violinist Elena Urioste and her pianist husband Tom Poster to four French composers of music written between 1914 and 1926, including a Violin Sonata by Mel Bonis, a name new to me but one whom these artists predict, in their engaging note, as ‘the next composer due for a major renaissance’. The Sonata opens in a melancholy mood: there’s a suggestion of Brahms within the opening paragraph but this moves on through a series of fluctuating harmonic shifts to a peaceful resolution in C. Urioste’s beautiful playing and her enviable gift for spinning a long melody seamlessly, coupled with Poster’s keyboard dexterity – he plays a Steinway D Concert Grand – are both well served by the Chandos engineers in that ideal venue for making chamber music, Potton Hall, Suffolk. In the sprightly Presto Scherzo we admire Urioste’s deft switch from arco to pizzicato, the pair articulating the fast-running music to within a hair’s breadth. The slow movement, based on a Greek folk song, taps into a soulful world, the players never letting pathos slip into bathos. The playful finale wears its heart on its sleeve, as do the performers, who confirm their expectation for this composer in a generous and affectionate performance.

Fauré’s Sonata in E minor (though all movements end in the relative major) has lived in the shadow of its forebear for many a year. The extended melodic lines are manna to Urioste, the duo’s iron grip on the movement’s structure, set down by the composer in the opening bars, acutely observed. The serene, classical poise of the slow movement, a demisemiquaver figure on violin underlining the period feel, builds to a genuine heart-on-sleeve moment. It’s the same story in the final movement, where the music, always in a state of flux, moves inexorably onwards from the climax at bar 192, both players at one in elucidating Fauré’s sometimes elusive sound world.

The Sonata by Reynaldo Hahn is a beauty, full of gorgeous melodies and an ineffable charm embraced wholeheartedly by Urioste and Poster. In between the two outer movements, where the prevailing marking is calme, we take a short ride in a fast machine – yes, Hahn got there before John Adams – with a Veloce designated ‘12CV 8 Cyl 5000 tours’, inspired it seems by a car ride he’d taken at high speed from Toulon to Nice, a journey this duo drive with pinpoint accuracy. The sonata concludes with a return to the opening music of the first movement where, following a long pause, one senses the artists reflecting on the album’s title, ‘Le temps retrouvé’.

The codicil is a little Nocturne by Lili Boulanger, played with all the expressive detail noted but never lingered over for effect. At the risk of showering further encomiums on these players, let me just say that it wouldn’t surprise me to find this disc up for Award nominations later in the season.