Like so many terms borrowed from the other arts, Jugendstil is not easy to pinpoint in music. This recital from Camilla Tilling and Paul Rivinius could also, then, simply be called ‘Vienna: fin de siècle’, had not Barbara Hannigan already used it for her similar programme (Alpha, 12/18). Tilling’s programme similarly features the delicate, highly perfumed chromaticisms of Schoenberg’s Op 2 and Berg’s Seven Early Songs. She represents Zemlinsky with his rarely heard Op 6 and adds in Korngold (his lovely ‘Glückwunsch’ of 1948, the only song to take us out of an otherwise concentrated time period).

While Hannigan plumped for Alma Mahler, here we have Gustav: Tilling concludes with the Rückert Lieder, and they find her at her very best. It’s difficult to resist the purity of her sound, the loveliness of her pearly, bright tone, especially in the first three songs (as ordered here). She is impressively sturdy and unflinching in ‘Um Mitternacht’, too, while for ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ she and Rivinius are joined by the violinist Nicola Birkhan in an arrangement ‘devised by the performers’ after the orchestral version. The performance itself can’t be faulted for sensitivity, but three feels to me like a bit of a crowd in this configuration.

There’s a great deal to enjoy in the rest of the programme, with Tilling bringing beguiling tone and unfailing musicality to some intoxicating songs, generally favouring a more conventional, less minxy approach than Hannigan. Rivinius is reliably superb in the often knotty, overwrought piano-writing. Away from the familiar Mahler, though, the soprano’s German is often indistinct and lacking in definition, with specifics sacrificed to general polish. Otherwise, though, this rewarding programme is beautifully performed and recorded.