Time was we thought of Alma Mahler more as muse than maker in her own right – supporting cast rather than leading lady. No longer. Dutch baritone Raoul Steffani adds his weight to the rebalance with an album that puts Mahler at the centre of both a musical and social constellation.

Alma Mahler, Lovers & Friends does what it says on the tin, bringing songs by Mahler herself together with those in her orbit: distant admirers Korngold and Pfitzner, friend Bruno Walter and flings Schreker and Zemlinsky. The effect is heady, plunging us into a fin-de-siècle Viennese salon that churns with desire, loneliness, spirituality, longing and alienation. If that sounds like it should come with smelling-salts, then that’s about right.

The program is divided into five sets of songs – seemingly arranged to supply a spread of composers, rather than any particular thematic or narrative connection. Though non-German speakers will have to take that on trust as there are no booklet translations – a curious choice in an album whose essay places such emphasis on the...