The title of this album of songs by Juliana Hall refers to a poetry set that became Cameos, one of the cycles performed here by soprano Molly Fillmore and pianist Elvia Puccinelli. But ‘Bold Beauty’ deserves to apply to the entire programme of Hall’s creations, which have texts by five Americans – four women and one male, Carl Sandburg. Among the poets is Fillmore, whose Cameos pays tribute to six American female artists.

Not all of the texts Hall sets with alluring imagination turn out to be poems. As the titles tell or suggest, Letters from Edna (1993) and Syllables of Velvet, Sentences of Plush (1989) are based on missives, the former by Edna St Vincent Millay and the latter by Emily Dickinson. (The Dickinson cycle can also be heard on a recording featuring soprano Susan Narucki and pianist Donald Berman – MSR Classics, 4/17^US.) That these songs have the flavour of poetry is a testament both to these supremely lyrical and resourceful writers and to composer Hall, whose glistening, poignant music follows the natural arc of the words while enhancing the conversational flow.

Theme in Yellow (1990) explores the wonder of the seasons through poems by Millay, Sandburg and Amy Lowell. Hall employs subtle brushstrokes of tone-painting to evoke the moods and emotions in the texts. Her music for Cameos (2018) highlights the evolution of her style since the earlier cycles, with added harmonic richness and bold and beautiful (amen, the disc’s title) shaping of melodic lines. Fillmore’s poems are spare, vivid glances at female artists who, in the soprano’s words, ‘challenged prescribed roles and expectations because they were compelled by art’.

Fillmore herself is a compelling interpreter not only of her own words but also of the other texts. Her soprano is bright and precise, able to easily negotiate the varied expressive and technical demands, if sometimes a bit generous in vibrato. Hall’s gifts as a pianist can be discerned in the wealth of detail in the keyboard assignments, which Puccinelli handles with urgent and flexible élan.