Prokofiev’s 72 songs are less well known than other corners of his repertoire, so any chance to increase familiarisation is welcome. Margarita Gritskova, a young Russian mezzo who has been a member of the Wiener Staatsoper ensemble since 2012, here presents a handful of these songs on this new disc, accompanied by the pianist Maria Prinz.

In his booklet note entitled ‘Prokofiev as Melodist’, Wilhelm Sinkovicz describes Prokofiev’s response to the 1917 premiere of his Five Poems of Anna Akhmatova: ‘Many people believed for the first time that I could also write lyrical music.’ And they do have moments of great lyricism, especially when performed with such poise by Gritskova, touchingly tender in ‘Memory of the Sun’, but there are also many stories in Prokofiev’s songs. ‘The Ugly Duckling’ is a familiar enough tale, but there’s also ‘The Sorcerer’ who lives alone in an old castle, so conjures up a wife who is so dutiful, so quiet that he goes off and hangs himself! Or ‘Chatterbox’, a little girl who denies she has any time for chatter while rattling off all the things that keep her busy. There are folk-song settings too, garrulous, animated, often poking fun.

There are a lot of words to get your head around here, so it’s little short of deplorable that Naxos – ‘for copyright reasons’ – has not printed texts or translations for half the songs on this disc. Delos, on its three-disc set of complete songs, managed to publish these texts in full, so I can only surmise that Naxos has skimped for financial reasons, which is a shame because it certainly detracts from enjoyment having to faff around locating these texts online (the Delos booklet proved invaluable).

Gritskova’s performances are a delight though. She has a light, flexible mezzo – she’s sung a fair number of Rossini roles – and displays an engaging personality, particularly in ‘The Rosy Dawn’, a song of mock-innocence about a shepherdess trying to pluck cherries. She relates the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale with ebullience and there’s a twinkle in her eye in ‘Katerina’, one of the Op 104 Russian Folksongs. Listeners more familiar with Prokofiev’s orchestral music will recognise the little song ‘My grey dove is full of sorrow’ from the film music to Lieutenant Kijé and a heartfelt rendition of ‘The Field of the Dead’ from the cantata Alexander Nevsky. Neither of these was set for piano by Prokofiev (hence they are excluded from the Delos set). The songs are presented chronologically, which gives a fair overview of Prokofiev’s output, but the Nevsky lament doesn’t really work when it follows on the heels of ‘Chatterbox’. Clumsy programming and a penny-pinching booklet – given the vocal qualities, that’s a shame.