Joe Chindamo is a jazz pianist with the chops of a Russian virtuoso; Zoë Black is a versatile classical fiddler who has played with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, inter alia. The opening track of their third album forms a manifesto of sorts. Scarlatti’s Sonata in G Major is given a sparkling re-arrangement: the violin ostensibly takes the “melody”, but really plucks voices from the stave and tosses them back against the piano. This isn’t jazz; it’s just having fun with music. The titular Lament gets a thorough update with some seemingly improvised passages – perhaps a coy allusion to the ornamentation native to a da capo aria.

Jazz gets its own guernsey in Gershwin’s It Ain’t Necessarily So – a rather André Previn-y arrangement, with all the dazzling pianism that suggests. Then out of the blue arrives a totally straight, but rather lovely, reading of Prokofiev’s Five Melodies for Violin and Piano. Instead of breaking down boundaries, this duo appears not to notice them. I wouldn’t even label this “crossover”: the brilliantly eerie version of Nessun Dorma – occupying a conceptual space somewhere between muzak and Messiaen – is anything but a nod to popular taste.

I did often find myself wanting to boost the...