Wilfred Mellers may have called him ‘a minor muse’ but Mompou’s sense of ‘truth’, whether expressed in memories of a paradisal childhood or in a mystical catholicism, results in a unique and instantly recognisable voice. Few composers have achieved so much so economically; and at his greatest, in, for example, Cantar del alma, the final song on this disc, Mompou creates a form of divine monotony, his religious fervour captured with a simplicity that is in a special sense transcendental.

Inspired by the poetry of St John of the Cross, such music, where singer and pianist commune separately rather than together, is vitally related to Musica callada, his similarly inspired piano cycle. Indeed, there are many family likenesses between the songs and the piano music where the composer’s distinctive world, whether playful or ecstatic, is expressed with a tantalising brevity.

Marisa Martins and Mac McClure make an ardent case for a special corner of the repertoire and they have been well recorded. Unfortunately they have been less well presented. Tomas Marco’s note is both assertive and uninformative, only one of the 22 songs on offer is translated into English (inconsiderate for those of us whose Catalan is, shall we say, a little rusty), the texts do not tally with the index and the last four lines of Cantar del alma are missing. There is a reference to McClure’s 2002 world premiere recording of the Granados Quintet when it was first issued in 1977 on CRD by Thomas Rajna and the Alberni Quartet. Sadly, gratitude for Columna Música’s enterprise is qualified by such lapses in presentation.