You can always rely on Helen Charlston for a thoughtful recital. So, when the British mezzo decided to record Dichterliebe – the song-cycle, as she explains in the sleeve notes, that “… has beguiled me for as long as I can remember” – of course she didn’t simply pair it with more Schumann.

Instead, treating Heinrich Heine’s verse as a bridge across voices and ages, we get a fascinating handful of framing settings: from the composer’s contemporaries, but also in the form of a newly commissioned cycle by Heloise Werner. The result is playful, poetic and exquisitely performed.

Opening the recording with Carl Loewe’s Die Lotosblume (though Schumann’s own better-known setting does follow later) is inspired. Rolling the text around her mouth with infinite languor, Charlston brings an almost cabaret freedom to this daring, sensual song. This freedom, coupled with the stern beauty of her darkly pure mezzo, creates a friction that animates the whole programme. Pianist Sholto Kynoch adds to the tensions, supplying a blowsier, more expansive voice to the dialogue – often coaxing...