This album is something of an A&R executive’s dream: two Norwegian superstars – and exclusive artists for rival labels – brought together to record music by the country’s most popular composer. It’s a mouth-watering prospect on paper, and I’m happy to report that it doesn’t disappoint. After two mixed albums with orchestra (6/19, 4/21), it’s a pleasure to hear Lise Davidsen in more intimate surroundings on her third album for Decca, and in repertoire that could hardly be closer to her heart. ‘“Everyone” in Norway knows this music’, she says in Andrew Mellor’s booklet note, before explaining how she and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes set out to address these wonderful songs afresh.

Indeed, freshness is one of the characteristics that shines most compellingly throughout this generous 80-minute selection. There’s the freshness of Davidsen’s voice, for starters, which has a rare rich beauty and steely strength and grandeur, but which she is also able to pare down to the most intimate pianissimo. In purely vocal terms, it’s a stunning display of range and technical control. But the soprano’s way with the texts – especially those in her own language – is also beautifully unaffected and honest.

Andsnes’s role cannot be overestimated, either. His playing is supremely refined and sensitive: each note is placed and voiced with the utmost care, all temptations to grandstand resisted. Initially I wondered whether he wasn’t just a little bit too discreet, and he certainly can sound understated compared with the impulsive and unfailingly imaginative Bengt Forsberg on Anne Sofie von Otter’s superb Gramophone Award-winning Grieg recital – still, nearly 30 years on, a benchmark for this repertoire. But the more I listened, the more I was convinced by Davidsen and Andsnes’s approach, in which emotion often remains nascent, bursting forth all the more powerfully when the floodgates open.

A case in point is ‘Møte’ (‘Meeting’), which Mellor identifies as the turning point of Haugtussa (‘The Mountain Maid’) – and which served as the album’s working title. Here the opening phrases, presented with chaste simplicity, open up magnificently as our mysterious maid, Veslemøy, reacts to seeing the handsome youth (from 0'58"). Indeed, the performance of this enigmatic mini-cycle, where the line between narration and identification is so movingly blurred, benefits greatly from these artists’ approach. The soprano slips between Flagstad-like authority and girlish delicacy in ‘Det syng’ (‘The Singing’), is irresistibly heartfelt in ‘Veslemøy’ and ‘Elsk’ (‘Love’), and alive with fragile high spirits in ‘Blåbær-li’ (‘Blueberry Slope’) and ‘Killingdans’ (‘Kidlings’ Dance’). It all culminates in an almost unbearably touching performance of ‘Ved gjætle-bekken’ (‘At the Brook’), the soprano’s line meltingly beautiful against Andsnes’s immaculately gauged accompaniment.

The rest of the recital more than lives up to the promise of the opening Haugtussa, with superb performances of the late Five Songs, Op 69, and the Six Songs, Op 48, as well as a well-chosen selection of other songs. Highlights among them include a performance of ‘A Swan’ of powerful stillness and concentration, beautifully tender accounts of the two ‘To Her’ songs from Op 59, an irresistible ‘Jeg elsker dig’ (‘I love but thee’), and rip-roaring performances of ‘Poesy’ and, especially, ‘Midsummer Eve’, in which pianist and soprano unleash their full resources to exultant, thrilling effect.

They make a compelling case, too, for the Op 69 songs. The wild mood swings of ‘A boat is rocking on the waves’ are captured in grand style, while Davidsen brings a lovely smile to the voice for ‘To my Son’ and ‘Snail, Snail!’. ‘At Mother’s Grave’ and ‘Dreams’ are quietly devastating, the latter once again showcasing the soprano’s impressive dynamic range. For the Op 48 Songs, the Norwegian pair come up against competition once more from von Otter and Forsberg, the Swedish mezzo’s experience in lieder arguably putting her at an advantage, as does the fact that her smaller voice can meld more easily with the accompaniment.

Davidsen’s voice does feel a little heavy, admittedly, in ‘Gruss’, but again her sheer power and emotional honesty come to the fore in a grandly moving ‘Dereinst, Gedanke mein’ and a deeply affecting account of ‘Zur Rosenzeit’. There’s an emotional directness, too, to ‘Die verschwiegene Nachtigall’, and I love the joyous spring in the step of Andsnes’s playing in ‘Lauf der Welt’, taken at a swift tempo. ‘Ein Traum’, perhaps not so engrossingly ecstatic as von Otter’s performance, is still movingly, rousingly done. Concluding the album is a performance of ‘Våren’ (‘Last spring’) that in many ways sums up what makes this such a special release: concentrated emotion is unleashed judiciously in a performance of enormous cumulative power, while Andsnes’s way with the brief postlude – unrushed but unindulgent – is exquisite.

Decca’s engineering is superb, capturing the full range and magnificence of Davidsen’s voice alongside Andsnes’s exceptional playing. I would never want to be without von Otter and Forsberg’s recital but this new album, capturing a different approach to these songs, is no less essential. An outstanding release.