It is misleading for the authors of the insert-note to suggest that ‘the Russian term romans closely corresponds to the German Lied’. Though both words can translate as ‘song’, the two traditions are unconnected, and the world of Schubert, Schumann and Wolf is far distant from these pretty trifles. At its finest, the Russian romans could produce Tchaikovsky, whose Amid the din of the ball stands out here for its hauntingly uneven metres and maimed waltz rhythm. The absence of the piano is regrettable. For the rest, the guitar arrangements are effective enough for what is required.

The best of the other composers (leaving aside a brief song by Glinka) is Alexander Dubuque, whose French descent perhaps stood him in good stead with a genre of song that has Parisian roots. He had a charming turn of phrase, suitable for setting these poems mostly of love glimpsed or lost, expressed with conventional images of sundered hearts, faded roses, dainty lips, soft tears, etc, etc. Dubuque’s most ambitious song here, The Two Farewells, is to a poem by Alexey Koltsov, contrasting a girl’s careless reaction to a lover who wept as he left her, with her sorrow at the lover who left her with a laugh. It is touchingly done, in a sub-Pushkin manner that also justifies comparisons of Koltsov with Burns, and Kaia Urb catches the tinge of irony in the wistfulness of Dubuque’s setting.

She has the sweetness of tone and the charm of phrasing for the morsels that make up most of the collection, a number of them by composers unknown to the booklet writers (or the six-volume Russian Musical Encyclopedia). It is a box of chocolates: a couple taste succulent, three or four become cloying, and they should not all be consumed at a sitting.