Modern, streamlined and elegant Brahms.

Clarity and transparency are the orders of the day here, with vibrato, portamenti and rubato kept to a minimum, but nothing feels undernourished or underseasoned in these illuminating, immensely invigorating performances.

Magisterial performances from both players, worthy of the finest on disc. They revel in the typically Brahmsian shifts of mood between songful nostalgia and turbulent drama, yet suffused with a yearning melancholy. Deeply moving.

The song-like nature of the first two Brahms sonatas is very much to the fore, Ibragimova playing with a miraculously sinuous vocal line, graceful, sonorous and at times heartbreakingly tender. Tiberghien is both poetic and magisterial, particularly in the first movement of the second sonata.

Just as it seems things couldn’t get any better, they finish with a dreamily poetic rendering of the first Clara Schumann’s op.22 Romances, guaranteed to have even the sternest of countenances misting over.