If you need any convincing that the choice of title for this album is an appropriate one, just listen to the dreamy intermezzo of Poulenc’s sonata for violin and piano, FP 119: in the hands of Callum Smart and Richard Uttley its vocal quality is never in doubt. Smart won the strings category in the 2010 BBC Young Musician competition when only 13 and now at the grand old age of 19 is a rising star of the concert platform. His partnership with Uttley is best displayed here in their beautifully judged reading of Fauré’s songlike violin sonata No 1 in A and in the flashes of earthy passion they bring to Ravel’s Gypsy-inspired rhapsody Tzigane.
