For all of his vast output of concertos, symphonies and oratorios, Max Bruch’s reputation stubbornly refuses to expand much beyond his Violin Concerto No 1 and Scottish Fantasy, and this album of lieder (which could be the first) may not change that much. Like so much else from Bruch (1838-1920), the music arises from his distinctive Mendelssohn/Brahms nexus – a sweet spot where he stayed in spite of huge changes around him.

This programme selects music from Bruch’s dozen or so collections of songs, which include works that would hold their own in any recital – such as the searching ‘Um Mitternacht’ (poem by Eduard Mörike, not to be confused with Mahler’s Rückert Lieder) and the juxtaposition of despair and hope in ‘Durch die wolkige Maiennacht’.

More numerous, though, are lieder that show Bruch being selfless to a fault in his non-interventionist approach towards the verse of his choice. He was also dedicated to folk-like simplicity that arose partly out of his having collected folk songs first-hand (rather than drawing from published anthologies). This modesty – which is such that even the most ingratiating lieder evaporate from memory – apparently prompted pianist Sascha El Mouissi to add brief piano introductions on seven of the songs whose voice and keyboard parts would otherwise start more abruptly.

Elsewhere on the disc, ‘Tannhäuser’ (published in the 1860s) is blissfully oblivious to the Wagner opera written 20 years earlier, using conventional ballad form to tell the story of Tannhäuser’s struggle with sensuality, in which Venus is sort of a variation on the legendary Lorelei. In a series of songs on sacred subjects, the passionate religious feelings voiced in the verse (often by Paul Heyse) barely disturb the music’s surface or hint at the composer who gave us the imposing choruses of his oratorio Moses, with all poetic irregularities integrated into the song’s overall structure.

Suddenly, with the Siechentrost Lieder, Op 54, published in 1891, the master composer arrives in a song-cycle of sorts for voices, piano and violin. Everything becomes more personal. The verse by Heyse touches down in various points in a legend about a well-born man who leaves his wedding for the company of a violinist, perched in a tree and shunned by society because his family has died of the plague. The pair depart from upper-middle-class existence – despite the possibility of death at every turn – deftly characterised with the solo baritone joined by solo violin, tenor voice and other secondary characters. In terms of form, the piece recalls Schumann’s Spanisches Liederspiel. And it’s in the final song’s violin solo – an elegy for the deceased hero – that one hears the composer of Bruch’s Violin Concerto No 1 with unfiltered clarity. Why is this piece almost completely unknown? Perhaps the need for extra vocal and instrumental resources? This would not slot easily into a solo vocal recital.

The performers intelligently resist over-selling this music – a bit of a conundrum for baritone Rafael Fingerlos, who is confined to the middle of his voice rather than the more expressive colours of his upper range. El Mouissi creates an ingratiating frame with rippling arpeggios, no matter how conventional they may be. Any reservations about the performances, though, disappear amid the inspiration prompted by Siechentrost Lieder. That’s the reason to have this disc.