‘This Island’ began as a literary odyssey by soprano Susan Narucki, yielding significant musical discoveries in songs by mostly unknown female composers from the first half of the 20th century. Letters by Rainer Maria Rilke led her to the discovery of Belgian Symbolist poet Émile Verhaeren – ‘a poetic voice that is direct but compassionate, recognising human frailty in all its forms, but nonetheless willing to love, deeply, without restraint’, writes Narucki in her booklet notes. Composers who set these poems to music included Nadia Boulanger in her song cycle Les heures claires, co-authored by Raoul Pugno. Beyond that, most of the music is recorded here for the first time, tapping into an era when poems were given a free rein in their through-composed vocal lines, with piano-writing framing rather than defining the words, only occasionally using discreet word-painting techniques. Narucki initially explored dark, often wintry imagery, and one doorway led to another in her research, with a variety of poets represented, ending up with a progression towards the warm-weather imagery and saturated harmonic settings of Marion Bauer (1882-1955), an American who studied in Europe.

Even in Bauer’s more explicitly vigorous manner – her ‘In the bosom of the desert’ is full of exaltation – the music still has mystery and hints of menace in a collection that never visits the uncomplicated blue skies one hears in, say, early Fauré. These were serious composers. Henriëtte Bosmans (1895-1952) goes to the edge of tonality in three selections that inhabit words such as ‘I no longer know where I was born’ (written by Adriaan Roland Holst); her songs become inner soliloquies with no typical sense of flow. Verhaeren’s ‘Vous m’avez dit, tel soir, des paroles si belles’ is set by Irène Fuerison (1875-1931) and is also part of the Boulanger/Pugno collaboration, the comparisons suggesting how Pugno’s background as an operetta composer may have prompted cleaner, more emotionally direct vocal lines. That’s not to say that Fuerison suffers in comparison: her version builds up to a satisfying emotional conclusion. Her songs are a significant find, with an emotional and harmonic range that suggests Hugo Wolf meeting Debussy.

Purely as a listening experience, the collection requires some perseverance: with so much music rescued from obscurity, Narucki wrestles with vocal lines that don’t always fit her voice, which has a fair amount of mileage to begin with. Vocal tics that might be barely noticeable in concert are exaggerated by a fairly close microphone placement that could also have been more accommodating to the highly capable pianist Donald Berman, especially since voice and keyboard often have an oblique relationship that could use a bit more clarification. Nonetheless, this album may well prompt a continued exploration of deeply literate composers who need not be lost and have much to offer the current generation of listeners.