At a casual glance or listen, Hermann Reutter (1900-85) might seem like a composer who did not so much continue the tradition of the German Lied well into the 20th century as distil its essence. Something rather like that seems to be happening in the first of four settings of Hölderlin poems about the seasons (Die Jahreszeiten): a delicately bare keyboard part supports a vocal line so responsive to words that it almost sounds like recitative. Yet it does not speak, it sings, and the piano adds a tiny flourish when the text speaks of the ‘friendly smiles’ brought by spring.

By the third song of the sequence, however, the vocal line remains smooth but the keyboard, reacting to the more troubled imagery of ‘Autumn’, approaches tonal ambiguity. Reutter, it gradually becomes apparent, has not rejected the 20th century but has adopted those elements of it that are compatible with the essence of the tradition in which he is rooted.

Words are paramount. They are set mostly syllabically, with very economical keyboard writing adding flecks of colour or discreet but firm support. Reutter’s purpose is always to project the text as faithfully as possible. Thus big, declamatory gestures and intense expression for the lofty oratory of the monologues from Hölderlin’s The Death of Empedocles, but the most transparent precision for the subtly precise imagery of Nelly Sachs, gripping little epigrams for James Joyce (set in English), bare and striking simplicity for the concentrated vividness of Marie Luise Kaschnitz.

He is a song-writer for connoisseurs of Lieder, still more for those of German verse, but alas, Orfeo have not provided translations of the German poems (the English ones, ‘at the desire of James Joyce’s heirs’, are entirely absent), and for a composer like Reutter that is a disastrous omission. Both singers are passionately committed to this music, and both are in fine voice; both pianists (joint editors of this series of discs) are alertly responsive, but to restrict such a rare and subtle composer to those who speak German is a sad disservice to him and to all those who do not speak German but love German song.