The primary claim to fame of Richard Strauss’s Krämerspiegel, the bitingly satirical song-cycle he grudgingly wrote to fulfil a historic contractual obligation to a publisher, is that it features the glorious melody that would reappear as the Moonlight Music of his final opera, Capriccio. In the song-cycle, that melody is used to signify the beauty and purity of music as threatened by the venal practitioners of the publishing trade, and – along with some remarkable other writing, especially in the piano – makes it clear that there is a serious, heartfelt intent behind the humour.

It’s great, then, to see the cycle given pride of place in this imaginative and playful album from Daniel Behle and Oliver Schnyder, the pair’s second all-Strauss album. Or is it? Not quite, since here they play their own little practical joke, including a charming song, ‘Der Schmetterling’, composed not by Strauss but by the tenor in highly convincing Straussian style, charmingly performed.

Indeed, the pair are excellent throughout. Behle is convincing in both the reflective songs and the strenuously heroic – such as in ‘Winterliebe’ or much of the Gesänge des Orients. There he often pushes his soft-grained, essentially lyrical voice to its limits, and one notices a lack of sap, but he and Schnyder negotiate the challenges convincingly. At the other end of the spectrum, he offers beautifully floated head voice in ‘Waldseligkeit’ and ‘Traum durch die Dämmerung’ – the only hit songs in this collection of relative rarities.

It’s the performance of Krämerspiegel that’s the album’s undoubted highlight, though, funny and moving by turns. Behle sings with a suaveness and sense of mischief that’s difficult to resist, with a snarl often barely concealed between the smiles. Schnyder’s playing is superbly witty, and very much a match for the outstanding, if more sharply recorded, Roger Vignoles in Hyperion’s complete Strauss series (with the no less outstanding Elizabeth Watts – Hyperion, 2/13).

With luxurious, playful presentation and excellent documentation (Richard Stokes’s booklet note is essential for unravelling all of Krämerspiegel’s in-jokes and puns), this enjoyable and revealing recital can be warmly recommended.