The 1954 recording of Barber’s Hermit Songs with Leontyne Price and the composer is a revelation. He plays the piano parts in strict rhythm. It tends to be wrongly assumed that Barber was a Romantic composer so anything goes – for example, the first movement of the Violin Concerto is always played too slowly.

The title songs of this new CD, Mélodies passagères, are settings of poems by Rilke, written in French, not simply translated (the CD booklet is wrong) and were dedicated to Pierre Bernac and Francis Poulenc. Their recording was made in 1952 but not released until 1978 (see Barbara Heyman’s new Thematic Catalogue of the Complete Works; OUP: 2012). The songs seem wedded to the male voice and when there are fine recordings from both Thomas Hampson (DG, 5/94) and Gerald Finley (Hyperion, 1/08), competition is fierce, but Jeffers makes a reasonable case for the high female voice.

She is at her best in the witty and touching Hermit Songs, written for Price and now one of the best-known American song-cycles, but she lacks the easy manner of Cheryl Studer, who shares the DG set with Hampson. ‘Nuvoletta’ sets a crazy text from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Jeffers gets the swing; her high notes are impressive but at times in these performances there’s too much vibrato. There are no details about the recording on the CD.