This is the first of a series of recordings that the Hamburg Chamber Players will be making for Toccata Classics, focussing on chamber music by neglected German Romantics.

Ferdinand Thieriot (1836–1919) was, like Johannes Brahms, a student of Eduard Marxsen in Hamburg.

Brahms remained a friend in later years – and indeed Thieriot’s music has a Brahmsian warmth and richness and overflows with memorable melodies.

Thieriot’s music, the chamber works especially, was popular during his own lifetime but since his death in 1919 it has been totally forgotten – not least because the archives containing his manuscripts were taken to Leningrad after the Second World War.

There the String Sextet was one of a number of manuscripts found floating in a flooded basement – it was lucky to survive.

All three works here – the Piano Quintet, String Sextet and Theme and Variations for the unusual combination of two cellos and piano – are receiving their first recordings.