This is a beautiful collection of music, but quiet. It’s one for reflective evenings alone; they’re love songs sung sparsely by countertenor (falsetto) Yaniv d’Or. Dan Deutsch accompanies equally sparsely on the piano.

The sleeve notes say that d’Or has previously explored the music of his Sephardic heritage, with his Spanish, Turkish, Egyptian and Libyan ancestry providing him with a source of beautiful folk songs, reflecting love, loss and longing for home. He was left with an affinity with the lovesick 19th century.

The lead piece on here is Schumann’s song cycle Dichterliebe, based on poems by Heinrich Heine who, like d’Or, is/was Jewish. Schumann dedicated the work to a soprano; while the piece is apparently normally sung by a tenor, d’Or sings even higher, in keys (technical note for singers) appropriate for a bass voice, the vocal raised an octave. The other half of the CD tackles work by Debussy, Hahn and Poulenc.

It’s got an air of melancholy about it, and it’s very quiet, in that there’s a lot of silence around the sounds. It’s all rather lovely.

Out now on Naxos 8.573780