‘Like the aroma of a costly perfume that evaporates and leaves behind it just a hint of elegance’ is how Christiane Karg describes the mood of her disc of Francophone orchestral songs in order to explain its title. She’s being discreet, since this beautifully programmed if full-on recital examines erotic yearning and regret within the wider context of the relationship between innocence and adult knowledge. Shéhérazade, ‘Épiphanie’ and the Duparc songs hanker after sensual experiences beyond the here and now. The Debussy/Adams Livre de Baudelaire, world-wearily meditating on desire and tristesse, is tellingly placed alongside the teenage Britten’s Quatre Chansons françaises, which contain in embryo the emotional landscapes of his mature work.

Much of it is beautifully done, though Shéhérazade, with which Karg opens, isn’t quite on the same level as the rest of it. Interpretatively she’s strong, delivering the cycle with the studied awareness of one who knows how to ‘interrompre le conte avec art’, as the text puts it. The recording itself, however, places her voice very close, presumably to emphasise the careful dynamic gradations of her soft singing, though it also captures an occasional pulse in the sound and an uncharacteristic thinness of tone in her lower registers.

Thereafter, however, the balance becomes less artificial and Karg’s voice is allowed to emerge in its splendour and fullness. ‘Épiphanie’ is exquisitely poised and her Duparc urgent rather than languid: the rush of excitement at the climax of ‘La vie antérieure’ is unusual, though apt. Le livre de Baudelaire burns with a dark, flagrant sincerity, while the Britten, gazing querulously towards adulthood, has a touching grace. The Bamberg Symphony are on fine form for David Afkham, too. Wayward speeds again hamper Shéhérazade, though the clarinets at the start of ‘Asie’ sound very seductive. And Adams’s slippery, troubling orchestrations, gliding away from genuine Debussy towards Wagner and even early Schoenberg, are illuminated with superb finesse.