Franco Alfano is best known these days for his completion of Puccini’s Turandot but he was a prolific composer in his own right: of his 14 operas, Risurrezione (1904) was performed over 1000 times within its first 50 years before sliding into relative obscurity (although Wexford staged it in 2017). Alfano was also a composer of art song: his vocal output ranges from his Op 1 set of Cinq Mélodies, student compositions written in Leipzig in 1896, to his Due Liriche per canto, violoncello e pianoforte from 1949, composed just five years before his death.

Riding in on white chargers to champion Alfano’s songs come soprano Anna Pirozzi and pianist Emma Abbate with this new release from Resonus Classics. Of the 15 songs on the disc, 12 are premiere recordings, as is the instrumental Giorno per giorno for cello and piano, beautifully played by Bozidar Vukotic, that pads out the disc to 56 minutes. But are these songs actually worth exploration?

What becomes apparent is that Alfano was a sensitive setter of text and that he didn’t use the piano as mere ‘accompaniment’. The Op 1 songs (setting French texts by Alfred de Musset, Alphonse de Lamartine and Victor Hugo) drew admiration from Jules Massenet, who found them ‘inspirational and worthy of praise’. They are delicately perfumed, often lilting student works, but ‘inspirational’ is pushing it a bit far, Jules.

Mature Alfano takes on sparser textures, the Sei Liriche (1919 22) indebted more to Debussy than to Italian composers of the verismo school, the piano taking on an almost orchestral role. Pirozzi chooses four of these songs. Vocal lines are sometimes terse and fragmented, as in ‘Perché piangi?’, but the emotional temperature can rise in more dramatic numbers such as the passionate ‘Al chiarore della mattina’.

The Tre Nuovi poemi (1939) are perhaps the closest Alfano’s songs come to the Italian verismo school: bells toll in ‘Ninna nanna di mezzanotte’; moonlight glimmers in ‘Melodia’; and the reverence of ‘Preghiera alla Madonna’, setting the words of Luigi Orsini, could grace Suor Angelica. The Due Liriche (1949) include an obbligato cello part that helps colour the atmospheric nature of these final songs.

Pirozzi makes for a persuasive advocate, her phrasing sensitive, even if there are some squally top notes that lose their firmness and spread under pressure. Her soft singing is admirable, her French in the Op 1 songs creditable. Abbate is a fine partner, negotiating some tricky scores with finesse. And if none of these songs are instantly memorable, then it’s good to have encountered them on disc and one hopes for future reacquaintance in the occasional song recital.