This, first and foremost, is a labour both of love and of scholarship. Miriam Alexandra combines a career as a soprano – Sophie and Gretel are among her roles – with that of an academic, specialising in the music of Pauline Viardot, on whom she completed a doctorate in 2014, and whose works she has edited for publication. For her debut CD she has chosen some 27 of Viardot’s songs, mostly composed for private performance during her years in Baden-Baden (1863-70), where she was the centre of an extraordinary and cosmopolitan artistic circle following her decision to abandon her stage career.

All the songs here were first published in German, though in addition to settings of poetry written in the language, Alexandra includes material based on translations of Pushkin, Fet and Turgenev (who may have been Viardot’s lover). Viardot claimed she took Schubert as a model, though one also notices the influences of Schumann and, above all, of Liszt (her piano teacher) in melodic shaping and complexity of accompaniment. After Goethe, Mörike was her favourite German poet: ‘Agnes’ and ‘Das verlassene Mägdelein’ are particularly exquisite settings of his work. The Russian songs bring local colour, a darker emotional landscape and greater freedom of harmonic experimentation into play. ‘Des Nachts’, to a text by Pushkin, is rhapsodically introspective, and very beautiful.

Regrettably, however, not all Alexandra’s material suits her. Her voice is crystalline, bell-like, with an appealing gleam at the top, albeit limited in its dynamic range. Her essentially non-interventionist approach lets clean, clear lines do the primary interpretative work, though her diction is admirably clear throughout. Songs such as ‘Der Gärtner’ and ‘Die Soldatenbraut’, two Mörike settings that sound like operetta arias, impress with their sparkle and wit. But some of the Pushkin settings, such as ‘Der Gefangene’ and ‘Die Beschwörung’, ideally need a darker tone and greater verbal weight. At such moments it is left to Eric Schneider to supply the requisite emotional density: his playing, fluid and beautifully controlled, is exemplary throughout.