One has to wonder about Brad Mehldau’s love life. The Love Songs he has penned for Anne Sofie von Otter sit very much on the dark side of the experience – chronicles of doubt, uncertainty, insecurity and the hurt of loving and being loved. They inhabit that precarious place on the cusp of the “art” song where Mehldau’s credentials as a jazz pianist make for a harmonically searching, even subversive, tone. They pose lots of questions, lots of “what ifs”, and they reek of regret.

But they’re a good fit for von Otter and they tap into all the qualities which make her such a class act as a recitalist. There’s an intriguing mix here of classical formality and a jazzer’s freedom through Mehldau’s spacey chords and embellishments. “It may not always be so” (words: ee cummings) is a salutary warning and its final line, “Then shall I turn my face, and hear one bird sing terribly afar in the lost lands”, is as a mournful siren song shrouded in dense harmonies. “Twilight” (words: Sara Teasdale) establishes its atmosphere in beautiful halting arpeggios, “Dreams” is the proverbial bad night, a guilty secret revisited through a ghostly presence, and “Did you never know?” at last brings hope in its gorgeous postlude where the veil of hurt is finally lifted.

The companion disc finds von Otter close-miked, up close and personal. We’ve essentially abandoned the concert hall for the nightclub. Von Otter’s way with these songs is cool and understated, and I applaud her for not taking the extemporisation anywhere it might give rise to embarrassment. The melodies are in every instance respected but Mehldau’s intriguing harmonic movement lends a feeling of exploration and occasionally provocation. Joni Mitchell’s “Marcie” gets a moody makeover but I don’t think “Something good” (the Richard Rodgers song written especially for the film of The Sound of Music) comes off at all. It’s too “clubby”. I’m not even sure the ironic subtext – for “something good” read “something bad” – is intentional. The beauty of the song lies in its honesty, not in some smoky ambiguity. Similarly, Bernstein’s regretful little gem “Some other time” loses its aching simplicity with one or two of the harmonies taking it somewhere I’m not sure it’s meant to be. And until the Swedish version of “Walking my baby back home” cheekily lifts the tone of the album, von Otter’s delivery feels a little bit samey. Maybe it’s just me but there’s a hint of “archness” about it, as if a little part of her is still back in the concert hall.

The French songs work best, with Mehldau and his chanteuse (in excellent French) so laid back as to be almost horizontal. “Avec le temps” conveys a wonderful harmonic indeterminacy and Jacques Brel’s “Chanson des vieux amants” is simply a great song singing itself in yet another guise. Von Otter’s artistry and Mehldau’s sleight of hand can do that and at its best that’s where the pleasure of this collection lies. But for me it’s a one-time-only experience and I can’t see myself returning to it any time soon.