As Gerald Finley explained, with a Canadian bass-baritone of Scottish extraction and a pianist with Italian parents who was born in London but moved to the US when he was 13, the possibility of mixing national traditions was almost inevitable. And in fact, such blending proved highly rewarding.

Finley exploited his vigorous, tensile tone in a Beethoven group including Italian as well as German settings, bringing an almost operatic subjectivity to Liszt’s Three Petrarch Sonnets, heard here in the composer’s own late version for baritone voice, and also allowing Antonio Pappano to revel in his virtuoso technique.

Both artists brought tonal warmth and spirit to Respighi’s Four Scottish Airs – clever settings whose wit and folksy charm makes their rarity scarcely explicable.

Subtler colours were summoned up in a Ravel group, featuring another Scottish song, a Greek song sung in French, a French song in the patois of the Limousin region, and an Italian song – in Italian.

In these and the following Shostakovich cycle, the unity of approach between singer and pianist was nigh on immaculate, each capturing the striking contrasts of mood – sombre, bitter, comic-grotesque – traversed by the Russian composer in his Six Romances on Verses by English Poets (some of them, in fact, Scottish).

A closing group of songs and ballads by Tosti – singing teacher to Queen Victoria’s family – was delivered with imaginative artistry that highlighted the genuine quality of some frequently underrated material.