Paul Juon (1872-1940) was born in Russia into a German-Swiss expat family and studied at the Moscow Conservatory, though from 1904 he was based in Berlin, eventually emigrating to Switzerland after the Nazi acquisition of power. He is primarily remembered as a composer of chamber music, and his Lieder and folk-song collections remained in limbo until they were rediscovered by the Swiss mezzo Maria Riccarda Wesseling during research at Lausanne University. Her Juon programme was originally intended as a birthday present to her mother, who comes from the same canton as the composer’s family.

‘Can you still play the old songs?’ Juon asks in the opening ‘Erinnerung’, to which a descending Schumannesque piano phrase answers in the affirmative. A sense of rootless nostalgia pervades his music, and his songs to some extent form an at times conservative dialogue with tradition. There are echoes of Schubert in ‘Das Mädchen’ and of Wolf in ‘Jugend’, with its declamatory vocal line over a shepherd’s pipe melody that hovers uneasily between major and minor. He was keen on folk music and one notices a fondness for strophic forms. There are moments of rebellion: ‘Klage der Gattin’ turns expressionist in its depiction of a wife confronted by her husband’s adultery; ‘Paradies’ has a harmonically drifting accompaniment worthy of Scriabin. Wesseling includes three of his folk collections – Jewish, Ukrainian and Russian – that veer, paradoxically, towards art songs with their sparse, aphoristic piano-writing.

She and pianist Clau Scherrer are persuasive guides through Juon’s world. Wesseling’s voice is expressive if grainy, and she has a finely understated way with words. In the folk songs, one notices the ironic smile in her tone as a macho Cossack is dumped by his girlfriend in the Ukrainian set, and a refined sensuality as a corresponding Russian pair meet furtively by a brook. The Lieder proper are all little dramas, with moods and characters carefully etched. Scherrer is a wonderful accompanist, subtle, clear and alert throughout. A disc of great sincerity, beautifully done.