Though born in Argentina, Bernarda Fink is of Slovenian extraction and her husband (a diplomat rather than another musician) is Austrian, so perhaps one can infer a special spiritual connection with Mahler: after all, the composer famously took time away from the stresses and politicking of Vienna at his house on the Wörthersee in Carinthia, the region of Austria that borders Slovenia.

The idea for this album came from Fink herself. Conceived to trace Mahler’s progress as a composer of songs, and to highlight their relationship to his symphonies, it offers repertoire ranging from rarely-heard early songs – such as the exuberant Im Lenz of 1880, written to Mahler’s own text – to the mature cycles. Before recording it, Fink gave a series of concerts with the other musicians who appear on the disc, and her voice is presented in a variety of settings: with piano (her partner is Anthony Spiri), with a chamber ensemble (in the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, arranged by Schoenberg in 1920, two years before he made his hauntingly stark chamber version of the marvellous Song of the Wood Dove from Gurrelieder), and with orchestra. All five songs of Kindertotenlieder are duly accompanied by the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich under Andrés Orozoco-Estrada, but the four songs from Rückert-Lieder – the cycle’s lightest-hearted component, ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!’ is omitted for some reason – are presented in a hybrid format: two with orchestra and two with piano; one of the latter, rather surprisingly, is ‘Um Mitternacht’, which surely makes a stronger impact with a triumphant brass choral at its climax.

Fink is not the kind of interpreter who emphasises the neurosis, fatalism and even grotesquerie that can be found in Mahler. She is essentially a well-mannered singer who respects the music and the text and does not impose her will upon it in an arbitrary or point-making fashion. Nor does she have a voice that sears itself into the brain: it is a warm, unforced and appealing lyric mezzo, perhaps less honeyed today than it was five or so years ago, which suggests a sympathetic presence in an intimate environment rather than a Wagnerian diva in a grand hall. Though it is hard to fault her – especially when thinking of some singers’ contrivances in Mahler – she could tug the heart strings more strongly at certain key moments. A case in point occurs in the single selection from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’, when the girl says to her (dead?) lover: “Willkommen, lieber Knabe mein, so lang hast du gestanden!” (Welcome my dearest lad, you have waited so long!). Fink is by no means inexpressive, but she does not quite achieve a potent fusion of heartache, longing and love.

Her relatively discreet approach is echoed by the other performers on the disc: the accompaniments are not weighed down by dragging tempi or appliqué expressivity. Recorded in natural-sounding acoustics in Berlin and Grafenegg, near Vienna, this disc makes a refreshing antidote to the excesses to which performances of Mahler have sometimes become prone.

Tamerlano, first performed at London’s King’s Theatre in 1724, is one of Handel’s most ambitious and sophisticated operas. It is unusual in the composer’s canon for the star status accorded to the tenor. In recent years, even the ever-questing Plácido Domingo has assumed the role of the captive Ottoman sultan Bajazet (historically, Bayezid), composed for Francesco Borosini – a native, like another tenor idol of the late 20th century, of the city of Modena. Borosini was perhaps the first tenor in history to acquire international star status, and Handel ensured that he was in the most prestigious of company: the castrato Senesino, the toast of London and a rival for Farinelli, took the virtuoso role of the politicking Greek prince Andronico, with the tempestuous diva Francesca Cuzzoni as his love interest (and Bajazet’s daughter) Asteria – a character who seems to presage the formidable Odabella in Verdi’s Attila.

Another castrato, Andrea Pacini, created the title role of the wilful Turkic conqueror otherwise known as Timur or Tamerlane. He is embodied in this recording by the Catalan countertenor Xavier Sabata, who last year released an album on the Aparte label called Handel: Bad Guys. Tamerlano is not exactly a good guy, but Sabata (like Handel) doesn’t believe in painting his characters in black and white, and his mellow tone and elegant phrasing lend a sensual, feline menace to the Central Asian warrior. As Andronico, Cenčić, with his fuller and more penetrating sound, is more overtly ferocious in his brilliant Act II aria ‘Più d’una tigre altero’ – but his Italian sounds stilted in the eloquent accompanied recitative before his Act 1 aria ‘Benché mi sprezzi’. If some distinctly Anglo-Saxon pronunciation compromises John Mark Ainsley’s Bajazet, he brings captivating warmth and nobility to the role – not least in his dying moments, another accompanied recitative, but strikingly free in form. As Asteria, Karina Gauvin upholds her reputation as one of the world’s finest Handel sopranos, though she now sounds less succulent than on her gorgeous album of operatic and sacred arias released on the Canadian Atma label five years ago. Mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose makes a velvety and dignified Irene (Tamerlano’s spurned betrothed) who finds a staunchly and richly voiced advocate in the Leone of the bass Pavel Kudinov.

Under the dynamic baton its director, Riccardo Minasi, il Pomo d’Oro sounds nothing less than thrilling, with strings that can scamper, throb and clatter, and oboes that both can both coo and call to arms, complementing and amplifying the characters’ struggles of power and love.

Handel: Tamerlano

Xavier Sabata (Tamerlano), Max Emanuel Cencic (Andronico), John Mark Ainsley (Bajazet), Karina Gauvin (Asteria), Ruxandra Donose (Irene), Pavel Kudinov (Leone) Il Pomo d’Oro, Riccardo Minasi

Naive V5373 (3CD)