The trouble with confining this selection to so-called ''Songs of Desire'' is that it limits the range, more than such a selection would do with German or even French song. Mussorgsky's quality as a song composer can be scarcely guessed at from the two included here, though the youthful Night hints at the greatness to come. The pair of songs by Borodin, of perhaps a dozen that could be sung by a woman, is more representative, at any rate of the seductive melody he could write so well. Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev and Cui are lesser song composers, but they exemplify the characteristic genre of a graceful melody conveying an elegantly expressed emotion of love or melancholy (or both), with a sensitive and sympathetic piano to hand.
The Russian romans was a style, French by influence as the name implies, that could easily slip into drawing-room sentimentality but could also inspire Tchaikovsky. Still, it is interesting to have a selection of songs by all the members of The Five, especially when they are as well sung and played as this. Borodina's sultry mezzo has the manner exactly: she never overplays her hand, she phrases languorously when occasion demands, she can 'bend' the intonation so as to lend an extra seductiveness to the line. Larissa Gergieva accompanies her in every sense: this is a shared exploration. There are texts in four languages, English, German, French and Italian – but no Russian originals. '