Malcolm Martineau’s survey of Fauré’s songs follows on from his fine Poulenc series, also for Signum. This is also the second time he has recorded the composer’s mélodies complete, and the new cycle is markedly different in approach from its predecessor, released by CRD in the mid-1990s. On that occasion, the songs were divided between two singers, Tom Krause and Sarah Walker; here, he uses no fewer than eight, all of them carefully chosen, and all leaving their own very personal imprint on their material.

Martineau begins at the beginning with ‘Le papillon et la fleur’, Op 1 No 1, written in 1861 and sung by Ann Murray. Rather than adopting strict chronology, however, he then ranges liberally through Fauré’s career, though the programme is structured around three songs-cycles – Poème d’un jour (1878), the Cinq Mélodies ‘de Venise’ (1891) and the sparse yet erotic Le jardin clos from 1915. In her only contribution to the disc, Joan Rodgers sings the last of these with great sensual refinement and a keen sensitivity to line and text. Murray, her artistry wonderfully fresh despite an occasional hardness of tone, brings elegant wit to the Venetian songs: ‘Mandoline’ is very skittish, ‘En sourdine’ wonderfully rapt. The real revelation, though, comes from the American baritone John Chest, whose performance of Poème d’un jour blends superb dynamic control – his high mezza voce is remarkable – with deep commitment, flawless phrasing and an easy warmth of tone.

The individual songs that make up the rest of the disc are given sharp focus through the complex interplay of different voice types. So Chest’s youthful-sounding ardour in ‘Les matelots’ and ‘Dans les ruines d’une abbaye’ offsets gritty-voiced fellow baritone Nigel Cliffe’s utterly compelling if occasionally unsteady ‘Chanson du pêcheur’. The heightened drama with which Janis Kelly delivers the curiously violent ‘Fleur jetée’ contrasts with Lorna Anderson’s rapt introversion in ‘Les berceaux’, while Murray’s knowing refinement throws into relief the deep, sweet melancholy of Iestyn Davies’s ‘Tristesse’.

Ben Johnson, meanwhile, is very svelte in ‘Sérénade toscane’ and ‘Nell’. He has too little to do here, as do Cliffe and Davies, which future releases in the series will hopefully rectify, and one hopes we will also hear more of John Chest. Martineau’s playing, beautiful and fastidiously detailed, is, of course, the unifying factor: few have quite such an innate understanding of the way in which the smallest gestures of colour and nuance expose the depths of emotion in Fauré’s work. It all forms a most engaging start to the series: I look forward to the rest of it.