For most listeners, mention of the genre of orchestral songs inevitably calls to mind the works of Mahler and Richard Strauss, as well as such cycles as Berlioz’s Les Nuits d'été and Ravel’s Shéhérazade. In fact, the French adoption of the genre was more widespread than might be supposed, and three-and-a-half years ago a generous selection of orchestral versions of songs by Jules Massenet appeared on an acclaimed disc from the Bru Zane label, conducted by Hervé Niquet and boasting six soloists including such talents as Véronique Gens, Cyrille Dubois and the late Jodie Devos. Now, the remainder of Massenet’s orchestral songs – bringing the total to some fifty items – are released on a keenly-anticipated follow-up album.

This time, a quartet of soloists comprising soprano Hélène Guilmette, mezzo Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur, tenor Julien Henric and baritone Thomas Dolié is partnered by the Orchestre de l’Opéra Normandie Rouen under the baton of Pierre Dumoussaud. And, although the line-up is perhaps marginally less star-studded, the good news is that both music and performances are every bit as absorbing as the first volume, providing another valuable corrective to the view of Massenet as composer of Manon and Werther but very little else.

Massenet’s orchestral songs are mostly orchestrations of individual mélodies written over a period of forty years up to his death in 1912, the majority dating from the late 1880s onwards. However, this volume also features two cycles, the first of which, Chansons des bois d’Amaranthe (1901, to texts by Oskar von Redwitz-Schmölz in French translations) calls on all four soloists in a variety of configurations, imaginatively scored for a fairly modest orchestra including piano. Together, these five songs constitute an ode to nature, with a madrigal-like a cappella quartet (‘Chères fleurs’) at its centre. The second song (‘Oiseau des bois’) is an enchanting duet for soprano and contralto animated by lively pizzicato from the strings, while in the third (‘Ô ruisseau’) a rapt tenor is answered by the two distant female voices. The closing number is a thoroughly infectious tribute to the pleasure of singing itself.

The other cycle, composed in 1909–11, is Expressions lyriques, originally a set of ten mélodies for contralto and piano combining sung and spoken text. Massenet subsequently orchestrated five of them, and the combination of lyrical outpouring and melodrama-like declamation makes them especially fascinating. They were dedicated to Massenet’s last muse, the singer Lucy Arbell, as a vehicle to demonstrate her theatrical gifts, and they range from the expression of burning passion to the evocation of absence and a touching sense of nostalgia. From the intimate to the dramatic, Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur here captures the varying moods exceptionally vividly, as naturally expressive in the spoken passages as in the sung episodes. Whether, as the booklet notes suggest, this cycle really prefigures Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire of 1912 is a highly moot point, not least because the musical language is far removed from the Austrian composer’s radicalism, yet it is still eminently worth hearing in the context of a programme full of pleasant surprises.

The single items that constitute the remainder of the programme are no less wide-ranging, and the best of them blur the generic boundaries between mélodie and operatic scena. This is particularly true of the second track on the disc, the imposingly funereal Larmes maternelles (A Mother’s Tears) of 1893, sung with great expressivity by the excellent Thomas Dolié. Religious themes abound, from Julien Henric’s ringing tenor in the opening number, the joyously folk-like Noël païen (A Pagan Nowell), to the mystic sensuality of Sainte Thérèse prie (Saint Teresa Prays). One of the most moving items is the wonderfully inward Élégie sung by Hélène Guilmette’s crystal-clear yet highly engaging soprano, and preceded by a lengthy introduction featuring a solo cello. Another highlight featuring Guilmette is the exotically-coloured La Rivière, punctuated by wordless vocal arabesques.

Two orchestral numbers are included: a Seville-themed Entracte from Massenet’s 1872 opéra comique, Don César de Bazan (complete with evocative percussion), and his arrangement of ‘Am Meer’ from Schubert’s Schwanengesang for solo horn and orchestra, in which the opening chord has distinct overtones of Richard Strauss! Closing the disc is Dolié’s moving performance of the exquisitely-scored La Nuit: a magical close to an exceptionally fine album. With splendid support for all four singers from Dumoussaud and his players, and excellent recording and presentation from the Bru Zane team, this is another winner for all lovers of French late-Romanticism.