This disc signifies a dual artistic emergence. As a composer of mélodies, Saint-Saëns comes out from behind the shadow of more highly regarded contemporaries such as Gabriel Fauré, while the baritone Tassis Christoyannis steps out of the ranks of promising singers with the eloquence of a major artist. Christoyannis and his pianist Jeff Cohen have recorded several discs of lesser-known French composers, most notably Benjamin Godard. But any Saint-Saëns selection is complicated by choices – some 150 – among which the scholar of French song Frits Noske chides the composer for suppressing his own individuality (autopilot, in other words). But the songs in the four discrete collections presented here achieve moderation of taste and depth of poetic content, and in a compositional voice that evolves with the choice of verse and the period in the composer’s life.

The best song collections begin and end the disc. The 1870 Mélodies persanes indulge the public’s taste for exoticism, though instead of conjuring anything explicitly Persian, Saint-Saëns creates more durable effects, most notably in the final song, ‘Spinning (An Opium Dream)’, which uses breezy but strangely eerie arpeggios to describe the vague but directionless pleasures of the drug. The 1914 La cendre rouge (‘Red Ashes’) that ends the disc sounds like a different composer. ‘I don’t dare call them mélodies’, Saint-Saëns wrote to Fauré, ‘because they’re something entirely different that I can’t quite define.’ I agree. Vocal lines are fluent as ever, but enjoy a kind of metamorphosis that creates a through-composed effect without resorting to Wagnerism. Some songs are downright impulsive, with an unexpected but poetically apt piano interlude in the middle of a verse. The intimacy of utterance rivals Fauré. Cinq Poèmes de Ronsard and Vieilles chansons are more conventional but still show a deeply engaged composer. They also allow you to appreciate how Saint-Saëns was out on a limb with Le cendre rouge.

Vocally, Christoyannis is a somewhat rare bird – a recitalist who also sings Germont in La traviata, rather than the other way around. It’s a well-focused, wonderfully dimensional baritone that one appreciates all the more compared to the occasionally unwieldy Didier Henry in his Saint-Saëns disc (Maguelone). Christoyannis’s ease of expression is also flattered by comparison to the more extrovert (and sometimes tiresome) François Le Roux (Hyperion, 5/97). Whether or not Jeff Cohen is the brains behind the selection and sequencing on this Aparté disc, he’s a splendid accompanist.