Christian Heindl muses, in his booklet note, that Tchaikovsky’s songs might have achieved greater international fame if the composer had set German or French texts in their original languages. ‘None but the lonely heart’ – still his ‘hit song’ and used as the title to this disc – was based on a Goethe poem that had previously been set by Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. Tchaikovsky preferred to use Russian translations or texts, and his romances, despite some very fine recordings, remain a lesser-known part of his repertoire.

Bulgarian mezzo Nadia Krasteva offers a sprinkling of them, presented in published order. Of the 13 song collections composed throughout Tchaikovsky’s career, eight are represented here. It’s a melancholic selection of love, loss and loneliness. Krasteva has a ripe, smoky mezzo, sounding not unlike Olga Borodina, and she doesn’t pull her vocal punches. She rises to the dramatic challenges of ‘Dusk fell on the earth’ gloriously and there is burnished purple in her lower register in ‘The fearful minute’.

There is a lovely cantilena lilt to ‘I bless you, forests’ (a beautiful song) before it builds to an impassioned climax. Hints of unsteadiness at the top are forgivable when the songs are full of such emotion. Misfires are few. Dora Deliyska plays a lovely piano introduction to ‘Reconciliation’ but Krasteva then rushes her fences, making it more desperate than usual, knocking about a minute off most interpretations.

One of the lines in ‘Night’ goes, ‘My soul is worn out by sorrow’. This final Op 73 set was composed at the same time as Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique, but Krasteva doesn’t always scale her dynamic down enough, which makes her recital a bit relentless in its turbo-charged delivery.

With booklet texts in Cyrillic, German and English, this is a worthwhile Tchaikovsky programme showcasing a fine singer.