The vocal ensemble Pygmalion, resident at the Opera de Bordeaux, are suitably seductive sirens – and even Bernarda Fink makes a cameo appearance in Schubert’s D920 Grillparzer Ständchen, her serenading awash with fellow female songsters, and harp.

It’s the discipline of the delivery – whether it’s the firm, resonant voices or punchy horns – that impresses most here. Both passionate and precise about their subject matter, Pygmalion have discovered watery depths to familiar composers, and have certainly not sold us down the river

as a potted history of the use of canon form by German romantics, the disc works very well...Moreover, the performances themselves are of high quality: the instrumentalists are beyond reproach, Fink is good, and Pygmalion’s female singers are in most respects exemplary, particularly in the matter of intonation.

a desert island disc, and one of those things you'd be tempted to rush in and save from a burning house.

ambitious, sometimes unexpected and yet always fascinating in its juxtapositions and comparisons … The singing from this French choral ensemble is both refined and characterful and the recording, made in a resonant church in Paris, adds bloom to the voices and provides ample atmosphere for the horns and harp without muddying the harmonies.