Holger Falk continues his journey through the mélodies and chansons of the early 20th century with a selection from the pen of Georges Auric, who composed some 80 of them between 1914 and the early 1950s. Auric was fond of writing small groups of songs based on a single poet. His settings include Alphabet, based on eight short miniatures by Raymond Radiguet, a pupil of Cocteau, eight ‘poèmes’ setting Cocteau himself, and five setting Gérard de Nerval. Nerval was a forlorn figure from the 19th century, his ‘poèmes’ offering glimpses of a ‘gently unhinged world’, to quote Graham Johnson. Falk, in partnership with pianist Steffen Schleiermacher, seems admirably cast in this repertoire, bringing a touch of theatricality to the genre – as one might expect from a baritone who numbers the Maxwell Davies cycle Eight Songs for a Mad King in his repertoire – with his flair for storytelling in the dreamlike world of Max Jacob, his objective but never sentimental account of the Alphabet sequence, his enactment of a music-hall entertainer in the Cocteau verses and his appreciation of the fleeting images of maidens, nymphs and gothic castles in the de Nerval poems.

There could be no more inviting start to Falk’s recital than his tender rendition of ‘Sur le pavé de Paris’, a beguiling waltz from the Gala Cameo film Henriette, where he varies the colour in his voice to subtle effect. The same is true of ‘Printemps’, from a play about Margaret of Navarre, the setting evoking the Renaissance style. Falk’s eminently straightforward approach pays dividends in Auric’s box-office bonanza ‘Moulin des amours’, written for John Huston’s biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec, where it was sung on the soundtrack by the American soprano Muriel Smith. Listen out for his devil-may-care approach to ‘À nous, la liberte!’, whistling as he goes to a jolly marching song from René Clair’s film of the same name, and his flamboyant way with ‘Portrait d’Henri Roussseau’ from the Cocteau group, where he combines expressive intensity and fearless characterisation. En route I was very taken with ‘Tango nocturne’ (actually track 20, not 22 as the booklet has it), which suggests that Auric had recently encountered the early Weill/Brecht collaborations. So there’s much to warm the heart in this treasure trove of song, expertly balanced and recorded.