Britten is “abroad” here in the sense that he is occupied with foreign texts. He is also away in time: in Italy in the Renaissance with Michelangelo, France in the pastoral long-ago of the folksongs, Russia in the early 19th century, Germany too except that Hölderlin lives as much in the world of classical antiquity as he does in his own time. The breadth of cultural reference is large, involving four languages, none of them his own. The recital, then, challenges its listeners as well as its performers.

And how these two singers have grown, both in voice and artistry. The languages assist in the sense we have of them as being transformed. Mark Padmore in Italian, Susan Gritton in Russian show themselves in new guises. Each is inescapably performing in the shadow of a great original; but even as (in our minds) we hear Pears and Vishnevskaya, recognising that their voices are written into these songs, we can acknowledge these younger artists as worthy successors, and (to be honest) part of us is glad to be hearing them instead. Padmore has now quite a full-bodied ring to his voice at a forte (hear him in the strong affirmations of the last sonnet), and Gritton commands an aristocratic concentration of tone, unshakeably firm and precise in its placing.

Iain Burnside more than copes with the formidable technical difficulties, and in many songs (for instance, the last of the Pushkin poems with its ticking clock, or the spinning-wheel in “Fileuse” mingling past and present in the old woman’s thoughts) we bless the imaginative touch. Recorded sound is fine, as are John Evans’s introductory notes. No comparisons, because part of the value of the disc lies in its assembly of the particular programme, and in that it is on its own.