An international Sophie, Gretel, Pamina and much else, Camilla Tilling shows herself at home here in Scandinavian songs with a European bias. The set list, mostly in Swedish and German (the latter even for most of the Grieg and Sibelius), intriguingly parallels that of Decca’s Diamonds in the Snow, a Gramophone Award winner of 15 years ago by informed visitors to Northern climes Barbara Bonney and Antonio Pappano.

Tilling begins her thematically selected tales of woods and things that go bump in them with the challenge of Sibelius’s late ‘Norden’ (1917), tricky, high-lying and Luonnotar-like in its sparseness. She makes a more secure impact in ‘Skogsrået’, Sibelius’s long first attempt (in song) at the tale of a wood nymph who steals a human heart. The recital’s repertoire keeps up narrative suspense with the group of the Finn’s German language songs that includes the ghostly ‘Die stille Stadt’ – like a time-travelled exile from Schubert’s Schwanengesang – while Grieg’s Op 48 German group has texts ranging from Walther von der Vogelweide to Goethe.

Throughout these songs, and in the following mood portraits of Tilling’s compatriot Stenhammar, there is fine use of dynamics by a singer and pianist who have clearly worked closely on the texts. As a Lieder singer Tilling thinks through her material – she’s compelling story-teller as much as decorative word-painter. She also manages en route a remarkably clean and unhackneyed ‘En svane’. There are fine older rivals aplenty here – including the Bonney disc and various von Otter collections – but Tilling contributes strongly.