A prime virtue of Hyperion’s latest song intégrale is that it precisely documents Liszt’s bewildering variety of revisions and resettings. Earlier almost always means more operatically extravagant, as we can hear in the two songs that frame this programme. Setting Goethe’s sublime prayer for spiritual peace, ‘Der du von dem Himmel bist’ (aka ‘Wandrers Nachtlied I’) in 1842, Liszt could not resist the lure of elaboration, repetition and rhetorically impassioned climaxes. In its extrovert, Italianate way it’s a splendidly inventive song, finely realised here by Angelika Kirchschlager and Julius Drake. But how much more moving is his revision of 1860, chaste and innig where the earlier version was rhetorically emphatic. With Drake ever-sensitive to atmosphere and harmonic colour, Kirchschlager sings this with hushed inwardness, culminating inthe rapt solemnity of the final invocation.Several of the songs on the disc are in effect dramatic scenas. Finding a wide palette of colours within her naturally warm mezzo, Kirchschlager is in her element: in the mingled bravado, languor and disdain, capped by an unforgettable sneer on ‘verachtet’ – ‘scorned’ – of ‘Die drei Zigeuner’ (sung in its first version), or the final setting of Dumas père’s ‘Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher’, much of which unfolds in stark recitative. She brings an ideal simplicity and sincerity to two touching, fragile flower songs (where Liszt approaches the innocence of Schubert and Schumann), and a vehement accusatory bitterness – very Heine-esque – to ‘Vergiftet sind meine Lieder’.

In Clärchen’s song from Goethe’s Egmont, ‘Freudvoll und leidvoll’, Kirchschlager sounds more anguished than ecstatic. And in what is probably Liszt’s most famous song, ‘Es muss ein Wunderbares sein’, she can press rather fulsomely on individual notes rather than cultivating a pure, serene legato (compare Diana Damrau on her recent Virgin recital – 1/12).

Far more often, though, enjoyment is unalloyed, whether in the ideal pacing and colouring, including some exquisite floated pianissimos, of ‘Im Rhein’ (complemented by the aqueous delicacy of Drake’s accompaniment), or the wondering tenderness of the late ‘Die Glocken von Marling’, with its magical, harmonically audacious evocation of pulsing bell chimes. Like the first disc in Hyperion’s complete Liszt series, from tenor Matthew Polenzani (1/11), this recital should open many ears to the richness and variety of his songs. Recording and presentation are first-class, with clear, literate translations from Richard Stokes and typically illuminating notes from Susan Youens.