In his lifetime, Franco Alfano (born in 1875), was a significant figure in Italian music, highly regarded for his operas, orchestral and chamber music and songs. Nowadays, however, he is remembered mainly for his completion of Turandot; a shortened version of the ending he provided for Puccini’s final, unfinished opera is the one regularly used for performances today. But while his reputation has undoubtedly suffered from his connections to Mussolini’s fascists in the 1930s and 40s, this impressively comprehensive survey of his songs, which ranges across his composing career from 1896 to his death in 1954, demonstrates that Alfano was a much more interesting, and in many ways more surprising composer than one might expect from his pedigree.

Starting out as a fully paid-up member of the verismo school, his songs show influences from farther afield, too, especially from Debussy and Richard Strauss. Perhaps most surprising of all is the catholic choice of poets that Alfano set, including Rilke, and particularly his extensive use of the poetry of Rabindrinath Tagore in Italian translation. The Bastille Musique set documents all of this immaculately, and the performances, by soprano Alexandra Flood and mezzos Nina Tarandek and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, with pianist Klaus Simon, are exemplary, exactly what’s needed for music that – outside Italy at least – is so little known.