Sarah Connolly’s beautifully sung Frauenliebe und -leben often called to mind Janet Baker’s early recording with Martin Isepp (Regis). From the sad reverie of the opening song, Connolly, like Baker, gives the cycle a more melancholy, introspective cast than most. The third song, “Ich kann’s nicht fassen”, is unusually contemplative (“Can he really have chosen me!”). Connolly does bring a passionate intensity to the moment of self-abandonment (“Ihm gehören ganz”) at the end of “Du Ring an meinem Finger”. Yet with gentle tempi she suggests the shy, dazed ingénue, as if she still can’t quite believe her luck, even in the excitable bridal song, No 5, and the song to her baby, No 7. Then – and we can imagine many years have passed – Connolly is magnificently desolate and accusatory in the final song of bereavement, with a graphic sense of withdrawal from the world before the healing keyboard postlude.

Connolly’s is a psychologically convincing reading, abetted by the fastidious, if sometimes slightly self-effacing, Eugene Asti. Only “Er, der Herrlichste von allen” left me uncomfortable. We have all heard over-triumphant performances of this song (Jessye Norman immediately sweeps into mind). Connolly goes dangerously to the other extreme in a performance that seems to take its cue from the word “Demut” – humility. As ever, there are many sensitive details of phrasing and dynamic shading. But of excitement, or of Schumann’s prescribed lebhaft, there is barely a trace.

With their contained tempo and fondness for lingering rubato, Connolly and Asti also rather short-change the ecstatic revelation of “Frühlingsnacht”, the final song of the Eichendorff Liederkreis. “Intermezzo”, too, lacks a surge of elation at the thought of flying to the beloved. But singer and pianist bring a true Schumannesque Innigkeit to this cycle of nocturnal mystery and menace, whether in a rapt, sensuous “Mondnacht”, a “Zwielicht” both melancholy and ominous (the coppery depth in Connolly’s glowing mezzo tellingly exploited here), or the vivid sense of enveloping chill at the close of “Im Walde”. Connolly also makes an eloquent case for some much-maligned late Schumann, singing the bleak, confessional Maria Stuart songs with the touching directness and intimacy of feeling that mark her whole recital.