Another triumph for François-Xavier Roth’s left-field period instrument group, Les Siècles (The Centuries), which was formed in 2003 to explore and illuminate late 19th/early 20th-century French music with contemporaneous instruments. So far this has been brilliantly achieved without any of the precious, pedantic academicism which bedevils so much baroque repertoire.

Both the Mother Goose (Ma Mère l’Oye) ballet and Le Tombeau de Couperin are suffused with charm and elegance (not to mention a finesse which raises Gallic transparency of texture and nuance to a new level), but also an exquisite melancholy in the Tombeau, explained by the fact that it was not just a homage to the spirit of the Rococo but a posthumous tribute to...