In a programme that moves, as in dreams, from land to land without seeming to notice, this delicately attuned soprano and her ever-wakeful pianist drift wherever Morpheus calls most beguilingly. The lullabies, serenades, evocations of moonlight and invocations to sleep are sweetly voiced and extended to include the tender observation of a lover’s repose or (in Fauré’s “Notre amour”) the lively appreciation of love itself. The “exquisite hour” is not so drowsy as to become merely soporific, and the expressive range is perhaps surprisingly wide.

To all of these conditions the performers are responsive and it is only at the very end that the listener has any occasion to return betimes to this critical earth. It may at some point have occurred to us that in this multilingual tour of dreamland not much English appears to be spoken and at the last moment, as if in awareness of the fact, and as a kind of encore, Peter Warlock’s “Sleep” is tagged on. And then, strangely, these sure-footed travellers quite lose their way. Like nervous wayfarers by night, they move forward in little jerks, sometimes too quickly but neither in time with the poet’s yearning heart or in tune with the composer’s plaintive progressions.

Otherwise all is well. There are many individual songs over which it would be pleasant to linger but if it’s to be just one, then I’ll choose the previously unknown Francis Hime (born 1939) and his “Anoiteceu”. “First time I ever fell for this Lat’n routine” as Eartha Kitt murmured fondly many moons ago.