Top billing on the booklet cover of this latest and most welcome Stanford release from Somm goes to the 1910 song-cycle Cushendall. This appears to be the first recording of this attractive discovery in its entirety, its seven settings of verse by the Ulster-Scots poet John Stevenson (1761-1833) serving up plenty of felicities, not least a pantheistic wonder supremely evocative of the rugged Antrim coast, allied to an impeccable polish (the accompaniments are a model of tasteful discretion), generous lyricism (‘Cushendall’ in particular is a thing of fragrant beauty, its plaintive sighs returning for the last two bars of the concluding ‘Night’) and even an occasional touch of characteristically Stanfordian wit (in the delightful ‘Daddy-Long-Legs’, for instance, listen out for the sly reference to the Magic Fire Music from Die Walküre after the line ‘in lamp or candle flame’). Incidentally, there’s an orchestral version of Cushendall, premiered by Dan Godfrey and the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra at the 1911 Festival of Empire.

Mezzo-soprano Sharon Carty and pianist Finghin Collins do this music proud and likewise prove worthy successors to Bernadette Greevy and Hugh Tinney (Marco Polo, 6/99) in the even more appealing 1913 collection entitled A Sheaf of Songs from Leinster. Both it and A Fire of Turf (completed the same year, and assigned here to baritone Benjamin Russell) set some 13 dialect poems by Winifred Letts (1882-1972). In the former Stanford’s inspiration hits genuine heights in the homesick tug of ‘Irish Skies’ and pathos of ‘Little Peter Morrissey’ and ‘Grandeur’ (an especially touching portrait, this, of ‘Poor Mary Byrne’ lying on her deathbed). Elsewhere, the enchanting ‘A Soft Day’ surely deserves its enduring popularity. Catchy, too, are the jig-like ‘Thief of the World’ and ‘The Bold Unbiddable Child’. A Fire of Turf is perhaps less consistently memorable, though the vivacious, folk-song-infused ‘The Fair’ leaves its mark, as does the final song, ‘The West Wind’ – one can readily imagine Stanford’s good friend and leading Irish baritone of the day, Harry Plunket Greene, making quite a splash with it.

Russell and Collins also have a ball in the three Blarney Ballads, composed some time between 1886 and 1893 to words by Charles Larcom Graves (1856-1944) lampooning the British Prime Minster William Ewart Gladstone (1809‑98). And we close with two numbers from Act 1 of Stanford’s 1896 opera Shamus O’Brien: ‘Where is the man that is coming to marry me?’ and ‘A grave yawns cold’, sung by Kitty and Nora (Shamus’s wife) respectively, and personably essayed by Carty and Collins.

Our own Jeremy Dibble supplies helpfully detailed and authoritative notes. Boasting admirably truthful sound and balance to boot, this enterprising issue comes heartily recommended.