The Franck sonata—one of the best-loved works in the entire Romantic violin repertoire—is one of a trio of delectable Franco-Belgian treats on offer from the acclaimed pair. A bonne bouche from Lili Boulanger completes a particularly enticing recital.

The music of Gabriel Fauré is at once unclassifiable and inexpressibly beautiful. One must yield to its seductions, savour in it the charm of the unexpected. The cello is the voice of the Fauré mélodie without the words. Its mellowness conceals passion. When Xavier Phillips and Cédric Tiberghien take possession of it, it becomes sensual, incandescent, a bouquet of refined, evergreen harmonies. The Élégie and the Berceuse will never fade, nor will the two late cello sonatas, whose surging vitality is that of a young man of more than seventy!

Mendelssohn may have published only one violin sonata (the early Op 4), but that does not signify any lack of inspiration in the others—left in manuscript. The F major sonata which opens this programme is a particularly substantial and ambitious work.