DG’s publicity blurb for this album describes it as ‘both a debut and a proof of musical pedigree’. It’s the Latvian star mezzo’s first disc of lieder, yes, and it’s fascinating – especially after tracing the idea’s history in the book German Song Onstage (11/20) – to see the performance of song portrayed as a stamp of artistic quality. As such, Garanča certainly goes about the task with admirable earnestness: she’s well behaved, serious, tasteful.

Nevertheless, with her slightly accented German and unstintingly rich, chocolatey tone, there’s a sense of a fine artist finding her feet in a genre where she’s not yet quite at home. The singing is undoubtedly impressive, the manner redolent of an age where opera and song were less clearly delineated. But the characterisation is a touch generalised and slightly cool, with, in the Schumann, little of the lived emotion and urgency you get, for example, with Dorothea Röschmann’s superb 2015 account with Mitsuko Uchida (Decca, 12/15).

Singing in low keys that are perhaps more matronly than maidenly, the mezzo is often either interpretatively conservative or, as when we get a seductively breathy final ‘wie so gut!’ at the close of an enjoyably heroic ‘Er, der Herrlichste von allen’, occasionally operatic. Still, there are moving moments: the glorious passage at the heart of ‘Süsser freund, du blickest’ (from ‘Weisst du nun, die Tränen …’ at 2'05") has a stirring nobility, and there’s a real tragic grandeur to ‘Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan’.

It’s a similar story with her Brahms, where the singing is impressive but where one misses the interpretative colour and variation of such mezzos as Anne Sofie von Otter and Bernarda Fink, who cover much of the same repertoire more movingly on their now-classic Brahms albums. Nevertheless, the sheer weight Garanča and Malcolm Martineau – providing excellent support throughout – bring to ‘Liebestreu’ is exciting, the grandeur of ‘Die Mainacht’ and ‘Von ewiger Liebe’ impressive.

There’s plenty of pleasure to be had here, then, even if some of it is a little guilty. While Garanča’s musical pedigree is in little doubt, though, there are others on disc who better show how to unlock the real emotional power of this repertoire.