Israeli-born, Paris trained and, as a guitarist, naturally steeped in the Spanish repertory, Liat Cohen here sets out to ‘tell the wonderful love story that binds together France and Spain’. The story may not be new but what’s interesting is how much on this generous recital isn’t actually associated with the guitar. There’s a ‘medley’ that joins a pair of popular zarzuela duets, rousingly sung by Charles Castronovo and Rolando Villazón. The second number, ‘Granadinas’, is especially fun, with the tenors sounding slightly inebriated.

Miguel Llobet’s arrangement of Falla’s Canciones populares has been recorded before, but the set is usually sung by a soprano. Castronovo does a lovely job. His baritonal tone has the quality of luxuriously soft, mahogany-coloured leather, and he’s sensitive to the music’s various folkloric nuances. I quite like the slight breathiness of his sound in ‘Nana’, for example, and the way it heightens the song’s comfortingly intimate character. The French songs (originally for voice and piano), too, are all charmers. Sandrine Piau sings the Ravel ravishingly, and she’s more impressive still in the three parts of Granados’s ‘La maja dolorosa’. The first drips with gorgeous melancholy, and how effectively she uses her lower register in the third.

Cohen is a sensitive and colourful partner throughout but I have mixed feelings about her playing in the solo pieces. The throaty tone she brings to the melody of Tárrega’s Recuerdos de la Alhambra is fetching but Capricho árabe is far too heavily accented. And while it’s admirable she’s made her own colourful transcription of Albéniz’s Asturias (rather than playing Tárrega’s), it wants more fire. I’m also on the fence about the vocal arrangement of the slow movement of Rodrigo’s Concierto; it’s beautifully sung but a little cheesy, like something you might hear in a television advertisement. Fly to Aranjuez …

Texts are provided but, sadly, no translations.