Over half the songs in Vol 4 of Julian Drake’s Liszt series date from 1860 to 1880, a period that saw the end of Liszt’s major phase of Lieder composition and his increasingly sporadic return to the genre in subsequent years. His late songs frequently deal with memory, mortality and abandonment, and the disc’s pervasive mood is elegiac, shot through with retrospective glances to the early warmth and wit of songs such as ‘Il m’aimait tant!’ (1842), as well as to the big Goethe settings of the mid-1850s in the second versions of both ‘Die Lorely’ and ‘Mignons Lied’. It’s a difficult programme, and one to which the silvery-voiced American mezzo Sasha Cooke is variably suited. For all its considerable strengths, the disc doesn’t have quite the same impact as its predecessors.

The later songs, echoing the stripped-back idiom of Liszt’s late piano works, hover in territory between melody and recitative, their often hushed vocal lines barely supported by the sparest of accompaniments. Cooke is very much alert to their introversion and sadness. The way she encompasses small gradations in volume over a relatively narrow dynamic range impresses, while Drake makes every chord and phrase shiver with meaning. The close recording, however, sometimes catches a pulse in Cooke’s tone, particularly noticeable in the opening ‘Des Tages laute Stimmen schweigen’. Though her diction is for the most part admirably clear, the words here could be a bit more pointed, too.

In some ways, she seems more comfortable in the earlier songs and dramatic narratives. The humour and regret of ‘Il m’aimait tant!’ is beautifully judged. The three versions of ‘Was Liebe sei’, turning less suggestive and more wistful as Liszt aged, are nicely differentiated: Cooke’s louche way with the end of the first is delightful. ‘Die Loreley’ pushes her at both ends of her range, particularly at the top where the sound, under pressure, can turn metallic. But the narrative is cleanly focused, the Loreley’s allure and the boatman’s panic both keenly felt. Best of all, perhaps, is ‘Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen ass’ (1845), which simmers and rears with angry resentment before subsiding into despair.

Drake’s commitment to this repertory is never in doubt, and, as always, he opens minds and ears to much that we haven’t heard before.