Not even the Swedish duo of Kristina Hammarström and Anna Paradiso had heard of Caroline Ridderstolpe (1793-1878) until the latter stumbled upon her name while researching 19th-century Swedish salon music. The composer was born in Germany before marrying into Swedish aristocracy, moving permanently to Stockholm in 1816. She was a lady-in-waiting to various Swedish queens, her status in the royal household conspiring with her gender to help confine her composing to obscurity as the work of a presumed dilettante.

No Swedish composer of the 19th century was in the business of scaring horses, but an hour spent in the company of 14 songs and three piano works by Ridderstolpe is nothing but pleasurable. There is a Nordic clarity and restraint to her works, but perhaps the composer looming largest is Mendelssohn (Ridderstolpe evidently never lost her German turn of phrase). The songs here tend towards the strophic, with mechanical (in the best possible sense) accompaniments that throw the onus on to the singer to shift the colour from verse to verse in response to the text. Hammarström does not disappoint in that regard, deploying her creamy soprano over deliciously savoury piano-playing from Anna Paradiso, who takes the inspired decision to play on a square piano by Eric Jacobsson from c1860. That keeps the whole experience rooted and domestic, allowing Hammarström to sing with subtlety while underlining the sense of gentle, everyday sorrow and checked nostalgia that characterises most of these songs.

The Swedish language and natural and/or seasonal imagery can’t help but bring to mind better-known Nordic songs, despite the music’s German tendencies. ‘De tvenne källorna’ could almost be an early prototype for Sibelius’s ‘Svarta rosor’ even though the Finn was 17 years off being born; this is one of the few songs that attempts some form of sweeping grandeur, though that’s hardly how you could describe the end result.

The 15 verses of ‘Flickan i Sätersdal’ do not outstay their welcome, proving the extent to which elegance and understatement were Ridderstolpe’s friends – or, at least, how much her unwillingness to push the envelope could hit the bullseye. A Lied ohne Worte is surely good enough to be confused for one of Mendelssohn’s own, and in the one song that has a punt at being humorous, ‘Nichts und Etwas’ (sung in German), Ridderstolpe is canny enough to keep her music out of the way of the linguistic jokes. Nobody with a brain would try to claim this music as important. But nobody with a heart would deny its allure.