Although not identical in their recitals, Joyce DiDonato and Barbara Hendricks have chosen many of the same songs. It’s difficult, listening to this repertory performed by these two very different American prima donnas, not to compare them with such great interpreters as Conchita Supervia, Victoria de los Angeles and Teresa Berganza. Can any singer not brought up within the tradition of Spanish and Catalan song ever really achieve the complete effect of speaking through the music that seemed to come so naturally to those great personalities?

Of course, the two voices are quite different; in operatic terms we have Octavian (DiDonato) and Sophie (Hendricks). Much more extrovert in manner, DiDonato relishes the richness of her voice and spins some gorgeous, purely vocal moments in Falla’s Seven Popular Spanish Songs. She is aided by deliciously playful accompaniment from Julius Drake. Hendricks is more straightforward, and there are a few moments when one is aware that she has been before the public now for more than 30 years.

Both singers also tackle Montsalvatge’s Canciones negras. Hendricks is the more tender in the famous lullaby, whereas DiDonato hurls herself into the final, joyous “Yambambé”. Is there any more seductive melody in all the Spanish repertory than “Del cabello más sutil” from Canciones clásicas españolas by Fernando Obradors? DiDonato sings all nine songs from the group – it’s the best part of her disc, and the producers have sensibly placed it first. Hendricks only does four of them, and wisely avoids “El vito”, a song that needs the sort of open-air energy that DiDonato brings to it.

Of the items unique to each singer, Hendricks and Love Derwinger bring a touching fragility to Granados’s Canciones amatorias, whereas DiDonato and Drake achieve a stylish intensity in Turina’s Poema en forma de canciones. Both singers provide encores, which find them at their best, and seem to sum up their different personalities. For DiDonato it is a Rossini Canzonetta spagnuola, full of sensuous teasing and building up to an accelerating crescendo in which – and this is the highest praise I can bestow – she did make me think of Supervia. Hendricks, joined by the choir, sings the traditional Catalan carol El cant del ocells: she dedicates this to the memory of Victoria de los Angeles, and in her singing here one finds that plaintive, nostalgic quality that was so characteristic of that great artist.