This delightful, beautifully performed album makes an emphatic, seemingly effortless case for these composers’ music.

Neither [the Beach or the Smyth], surely, has ever been treated to anything like Little’s gleaming, endlessly fluid tone or John Lenehan’s warmly characterised, unfailingly sensitive pianism…there’s a flexibility and sense of sweep to Little and Lenehan’s performance [of the Beach] that’s utterly persuasive on its own terms. The two players respond to each other as if by instinct.

A valuable disc, resonantly played and recorded.

The British violinist recently announced her imminent retirement from public performance, and if this terrific album of sonatas and romances by female composers proves to be her last hurrah on record she certainly goes out on a high: the soaring lyricism of Beach’s 1896 sonata and the restless energy and inventiveness of Ethel Smyth’s work from nine years earlier are projected with such conviction that it seems incredible that this music isn’t a staple on recital-programmes everywhere.

Pianist John Lenehan provides agile, considered support throughout, and recorded sound is warm and close.

She and the pianist John Lenehan do a brilliant job on works by an all-female line-up of composers

The Sonata is played magnificently by Little and Lenehan: there have been a number of previous recordings but I cannot imagine them being better.

Amy Beach’s lilting Romance and liquid Invocation are affecting miniatures played here with exquisite care.