Annette Dasch is a young German soprano who is picking off the formative stage-posts of professional opportunity with a special interest in period performance. This surprisingly esoteric début disc of 17th-century German song draws on this penchant through categories of Baroque artifice: love, peace, nature and so on. The results are more effective than affecting since Dasch is a singer who uses her brooding, mezzo-like timbre to greater declamatory than poetic effect. The Krieger examples, such as Adam’s Flueg, Psyche, flueg, are articulate and well-projected and Dasch brings a nobility of expression to Erlebach’s Unser leben (very much the centrepiece of the disc).

Yet however unusual the vocal quality for a soprano of her age, approximate pitching – often exacerbated by astringent surges through long-notes – does not make for much consistent enchantment. Tonal coloration is pretty unrelenting from track to track. I enjoyed Seelchen by Heinrich Albert and several other well-delivered songs, all expertly played by the members of Alte Musik Berlin but a penetrating voice in this repertoire is only viable if it is matched by scope (beyond just good diction) and expressive range. One suspects Dasch is often caught between two stools, musical instinct versus Baroque vocal mores. If that’s the case, then this was not the wisest repertoire for a debut disc but she will probably end up as the finest Susanna of her generation and I’ll eat my words.