Nicky Spence turns to Fauré for his new recital with Julius Drake, a beautifully programmed disc that surveys the dominant themes of love, desire and loss in Fauré’s early and middle-period songs by tracing a broad emotional trajectory from passionate consummation to isolation and regret. Its raison d’être is to some extent La bonne chanson in the version with piano and string quintet, with which Spence opens. The early ‘Lydia’, from around 1870 – which Fauré later came to associate with his mistress Emma Bardac, and which supplies the cycle she inspired with its main thematic material – follows immediately, ushering in a further group of amatory songs with piano, until ‘Les berceaux’ from the Op 23 set almost imperceptibly introduces ideas of separation and parting. Thereafter the mood darkens through Poème d’un jour, written in the aftermath of Fauré’s broken engagement to Marianne Viardot in 1877, until we reach the bitterness of ‘Automne’, the ambiguities of ‘Clair de lune’ and the resignation of ‘Dans la forêt de septembre’.

Opinions have differed over time about the chamber version of La bonne chanson, and Fauré himself is on record as saying, shortly after its 1898 premiere at a private concert in London, that he still preferred the piano original. But a strong case is made for it here. The introduction of strings tips the mood from impulsive rapture towards introspection, as if desire is recollected rather than immediately felt – a reminder, perhaps, that Fauré’s affair with Bardac had cooled by 1898. Spence, in wonderful voice here, sings with bronzed tone, a keen sense of line and a reined-in intensity that allows words and emotional shifts to register fully. There’s a telling surge of feeling at ‘Ô bien-aimée’, in ‘La lune blanche’, and a real sense of rapture in the ecstatic arching phrase in which ‘vous’ become ‘tu’ at the close of ‘J’ai presque peur, en vérité’. The Piatti Quartet and double-bass player Tim Gibbs sound exquisite in ‘Une sainte en son auréole’ at the start, where the piano is silent before excitedly ushering in the new dawn of the second song, ‘Puisque l’aube grandit’. Drake is excellent, as one might expect, anchoring a fine ensemble performance in which all the players seem to function as one.

The songs with piano are comparably accomplished. The lyricism of Spence’s singing impresses throughout, as does his understated way with words and meaning. The slightly self-deprecating irony of ‘Chanson d’amour’ is delightful, and the breakneck way ‘Notre amour’ hurtles from envisioning love as ‘chose légère’ to ‘chose éternelle’ is deftly done. Poème d’un jour sounds by turns furious and wistful, but the emotional climax of the album’s second half, and something of a jolt after all that has gone before, comes with ‘Automne’, performed with considerable ferocity, as Spence becomes increasingly declamatory and the jagged left-hand piano figurations – Drake is at his most intense here – seem to hang unresolved in the chilly air. After that, ‘Clair de lune’ sounds more melancholy and bittersweet than it usually does, and ‘Dans la forêt de septembre’ brings the disc to its haunting close. It’s a most distinguished recital, and warmly recommended.