Linguists, ethno-musicologists and anthropologists may well be automatically attracted to this Erik Chisholm album of Scottish song and verse, dating from the fifth century forwards, and doing so with artistry and integrity.

The art-song audience, though, is likely to have more layers of discovery over time. Initially, one is relieved that there’s little to no folksy sentimentality, and bagpipes are only hinted at in some of the songs’ chord progressions and voicings. Melodies are highly lyrical but aren’t sing-songy. Chisholm seems to use these deep folk roots as a jumping-off point for less predictable terrains, often giving a character sketch of the song’s protagonist, somewhat in the spirit of Mussorgsky. In other words, this isn’t postcard music. If a strong central personality isn’t apparent, it’s because Chisholm isn’t about showing what he can do with the words so much as entering into them to explore a huge range of possible emotions in these 36 songs, the majority of which are recorded for the first time.

Sometimes called the Scottish Bartók, Chisholm (1904-65) wrote concertos and operas that, as far as I’ve investigated, are the real thing, many of them from his later years while running the South African College of Music. Curiously, those concert works don’t prepare you for this song collection’s rich confluence of sources. Some melodies are adapted from Patrick MacDonald’s A Collection of Scottish Airs, published in 1784. Verses reflect Gaelic influences to various degrees; numerous contributions from William Soutar (1898-1943) are in Braid Scots. More conventional English-language verse comes from AE Housman and Chisholm’s poet wife, Lillias Scott.

Accompaniments can be dense and mercurial or so spare (as in ‘The Mermaid’, half lullaby, half siren song) that they barely exist. The Bartók comparison suggests that Chisholm was a modernist of sorts – and indeed, the piano-writing in ‘To his love whom he has kissed against her will’ is polytonal – though much more of his music suggests Ralph Vaughan Williams without all of the harmonic upholstery.

Any music so culturally specific requires native singers for any success, and the agile vocal trio here – Mhairi Lawson, Nicky Spence and Michael Mofidian – are fully qualified. Poetry that seems indecipherable in print becomes astonishingly communicative when so well sung with no cognitive distance between their fine voices and the dialects at hand. (It also helps that certain idioms are translated, almost in the fashion of footnotes, in the booklet).

Reflective prayers and laments are given a spring-water freshness by Lawson. Ever-fearless Spence does well with songs about adventure and travel, requiring extravagant (even outrageous) flights of emotion. The raucous, even less-poised songs such as ‘The Chailleach – My spiteful old woman’ are in good hands with Mofidian. All three come together in ‘Cock-Robin’ (text by Soutar) with a playful heat that leaves you wanting more. Pianist Burnside seems game for everything.