Among French singers, François Le Roux has been one of the foremost in revealing the delights and diversity of Poulenc’s songs during recent decades. His participation in this five-disc set, both as baritone and as author of a perceptive introductory essay, is of particular value: the voice itself might not now always be as focused or consistent as it once was but you only have to listen to his interpretations of Banalités, the Quatre Poèmes de Guillaume Apollinaire and ‘Le toréador’ on the first disc or the tiny ‘Pierrot’ on the second to appreciate that he has a profound understanding of how to ‘act’ and characterise the songs through his seasoned response to the colours, inflections and stimuli of the music and texts.

‘Pierrot’ might be tiny but the following song, ‘Vive Nadia’, is even tinier at a mere 15 seconds. Its singer is the Canadian baritone Marc Boucher, a good foil to Le Roux throughout the set and one who exercises a smooth lyrical talent and expressive pungency in such meatier fare as the paean to the animal kingdom in Le bestiaire and the poetic vignettes of contemporary painters by Paul Eluard in Le travail du peintre. Alongside Le Roux and Boucher there are three sopranos and a mezzo, all nicely contrasted in timbre and temperament, and Olivier Godin is the remarkably versatile, stylishly observant pianist. Julie Fuchs brings a lovely soubrette sparkle to the first two of the Trois Poèmes de Louise de Vilmorin and a more rapt intensity to the third one. Pascale Beaudin similarly encompasses a broad expressive range from the solemn ‘Est-il un coin plus solitaire’ in the Quatre Poèmes de Max Jacob to the childlike imagery of the Quatre Chansons pour enfants and the mix of contemplation and gaiety in Poulenc’s last cycle, La courte paille. Hélène Guilmette is radiantly animated in the Airs chantés and Fiançailles pour rire.

This complete set of Poulenc’s cycles and single songs – 170 songs in all – emphasises that it was the interweaving of voice and verse that he found to be the most fertile medium for his imagination to take wing. The language of his chosen poets ignites brilliant, beautifully crafted miniatures, and even his rare forays into non-French territory such as the Huit Chansons polonaises, beautifully sung here by Julie Boulianne, are marked by the same immediacy and sensibility.