'Voyage intime’ marks the start of a new recording partnership between Sandrine Piau and David Kadouch, already much admired together in concert, it would seem. It’s a remarkable disc in many ways, though the title doesn’t quite give an adequate reflection of its contents. The central themes are the persistence of desire, the arbitrary inevitability of death (‘I die I know not when, I go I know not where’ – lines from the philosopher Clément Rosset, quoted in the booklet), and an existential yearning to escape the here and now, embodied in the juxtaposition between Schubert’s ‘Kennst du das Land’ and Duparc’s ‘L’invitation au voyage’, which also marks the transition from lied to mélodie at the disc’s midpoint.

‘It is in those wanderings where melancholy is king that our musical ports of call are situated’, Piau writes. There is an at times unnerving emphasis on ‘people being snatched away from the land of the living’ (‘Erlkönig’, ‘Der Tod und das Mädchen’, Liszt’s ‘Der Fischerknabe’), as well as some surprising musical parallels: the close proximity of ‘Erlkönig’ to Clara Schumann’s ‘Lorelei’ reveals the latter’s overt debt to Schubert in the accompaniment’s hammering monotones. We could have done with all five of Debussy’s Baudelaire settings instead of just three, and the absence of ‘Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt’ also seems strange on a disc that includes Schubert’s other Mignon songs. But it’s a finely laid-out programme, albeit prevailingly dark in mood, which Liszt’s ‘Comment, disaient-ils’, the recital’s casual envoi, does little to dispel.

It’s wonderfully done, though. Piau’s way of singing off the line while deploying subtle gradations of colour and dynamics to illuminate the text finds its counterpart in Kadouch’s poetic yet detailed playing, and they often achieve a remarkable unity of aim and expression, admirably restrained throughout, yet on occasion also startling. The mounting panic of ‘Erlkönig’ is breathtaking – the boy’s cry of pain as the Erlking attacks is truly horrific – but there’s no suggestion for a second of overt histrionics. As Death comes to claim Schubert’s Maiden, Piau’s bleached tone and the quiet insistence of the underlying piano chords are profoundly unsettling, and the song further shocks at its close when Piau reveals a sepulchral lower register, which I, for one, was unaware she possessed.

The anxiety of ‘Kennst du das Land’ is swept aside by the bright, unusually urgent performance of ‘L’invitation au voyage’ that follows, but its hopes for ‘luxe, calme et volupté’ are only reached when we get to ‘La vie antérieure’, gloriously languid and utterly ravishing. The ennui of Debussy’s Baudelaire settings, meanwhile, contrasts with the disillusioned bitterness of ‘Si tout ceci n’est qu’un pauvre rêve’ from Lili Boulanger’s Clairières dans le ciel, with its declamatory vocal line and oppressive pianistic allusions to Tristan. Kadouch, meanwhile, is also given two solo works: Clara Schumann’s turbulent Second Scherzo; and Boulanger’s breezy Le cortège, somewhat adrift from the Baudelairean malaise that surrounds it, though he plays it with bags of charm. It all adds up to a beautiful, often profoundly affecting recital, to which you will want to return again and again.