It might not be immediately clear from the cover what this recital actually is. Claudia and Grégory Moulin are billed as ‘voice and piano’, while the pretentiousness of the title itself echoes through a waffly introductory note by the two artists. What we in fact have is a rather nicely planned programme, in which pairs of Strauss songs alternate with pairs of songs by composers from in and around the same aesthetic orbit. It’s a selection that Claudia Moulin (née Galli) and her partner have been touring in recital for some time.

Alas, though, the packaging seems to reflect their general approach, which is similarly concerned less with specifics, it seems, than impressions. And things don’t get off to a good start with a mistake in the left hand of the piano part in the first bar of ‘Anakreons Grab’, given a tone higher than usual.

On the plus side, the soprano has a good line in the floated phrase and is a confident, unrushed performer. Her performance of Korngold’s ‘Sterbelied’ is enjoyable and her seductive way with such songs as ‘Die Nacht’ is effective enough. But a quick comparison with, say, Louise Alder’s account on her recent Strauss-only debut disc (Orchid, 9/17) shows that you can get more purity of tone as well as an awful lot more care with the words elsewhere.

Indeed, Claudia Moulin’s German is indistinct, passive and accented; and the voice itself can’t quite deliver what her approach seems to want it to, often swooping about and turning vinegary under pressure. The general emotional temperature of the disc remains tepid – you’ll have to go a long way, for example, to find a more determinedly passionless account of Brahms’s glorious ‘Die Mainacht’ – and Grégory Moulin’s piano-playing, on an instrument that sounds strangely artificial, is uninvolved and fatally short on incisiveness. The release includes no texts or translations.