Cocteau is an imaginatively planned album by Isabelle O’Connell of music connected with or inspired by Jean Cocteau, opening with Satie’s Rag-Time Parade. This is followed by three alluring pieces by Germaine Tailleferre (real gems, beautifully played here), Stravinsky’s Ragtime and Les cinq doigts and Satie’s Gnossiennes. The Album des Six, published in 1920, is much talked about as the only occasion on which all of ‘Les Six’ actually collaborated together, encouraged by their mentor Cocteau, comprising one piece each by Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc and Tailleferre. But it’s rather less often that the set is played complete, so it’s great to have a fine performance of it here. All of this is worth hearing, and there’s an important non-French addition: the Irish composer Rhona Clarke’s Cocteau (2022) is a series of six musical portraits of his works (Antigone, Orpheus, Oedipus and so on) and his character. Clarke’s language is atmospheric and always engaging, and her music is given splendid advocacy by O’Connell, who commissioned the set. Captured in warm sound (recorded at St Peter’s Church, Drogheda), this is a thoroughly worthwhile issue