Recording of the Week, Magdalena Kožená performs orchestral songs by Martinů, Dvořák, and Hans Krása

Following her beguiling recording of folk-inspired song cycles last year, mezzo Magdalena Kožená reunites with the formidable team of the Czech Philharmonic and her husband Simon Rattle to present a similarly enchanting selection of songs by Czech composers, beginning with Bohuslav Martinů's Nipponari. Written in 1912, it comprises seven settings of translations of Japanese verse which often ruminate on themes of melancholy and mortality. Even with a relatively small orchestra Martinů produces extraordinarily varied textures, with the rich sonority of divided violas and cellos beautifully depicting the rising moon in "The Blue Hour", and silky upper strings, harp and celeste conjuring the "Footsteps in the Snow" of the fifth song in the cycle.

Likewise, Kožená brings an impressive range of colours and expression to her tone, matching the plaintive cor anglais in "Old Age" as she sings of how her once jet-black hair has now turned white from the toil of everyday life, and also not afraid to add a momentarily harder edge to her sound in "By the Sacred Lake" to portray the angry squawking of the ducks. This thoughtful attentiveness to the text and how it informs her choice of timbre is evident throughout, notably in the second of two songs from Dvořák's Op. 2a cycle, setting texts by Gustav Pfleger Moravský. Entitled "My heart often broods in pain", it enables Kožená to treat us to some radiant, incredibly affecting singing as she contemplates how even the most charming love ultimately brings only thorns and agonies (in which she receives sublime orchestral accompaniment from clarinets and horns especially), shifting briefly into chest voice as she starts to read the inscription on the gravestone: "Here sleeps a withered heart! Here sleeps a broken heart!". Somewhat reminiscent in style of the "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka, it's a stirring highlight and a performance to be treasured.

The album then takes a more sombre turn, at least in terms of the fate of its composers, both of whom were interned at Theresienstadt during the Second World War. Coming from a much earlier period in his life, Hans Krása's Four Orchestral Songs, Op. 1 were written in 1920 and set nonsense verse by the German poet, Christian Morgenstern. The frequently bizarre flights of fancy afford Krása many opportunities for imaginative touches of instrumentation, from the swirling woodwinds and trumpets characterising what is initially assumed to be the shriek of a gale or the howl of an owl (the noise subsequently turns out instead to be the heavy rasping of a noose in the gallows), to another moment involving woodwinds (this time joined by the celeste) representing the melting of ice.

As before, Kožená is an equal partner in the journey, particularly in the fourth of these songs, entitled "The Hanged Man's Song to the Hangman's Maid". In this most Mahlerian song of the set, the recently deceased gentleman implores the hangman's companion to comfort him in his death by kissing and caressing his skull even though, as he acknowledges, his mouth is now a black abyss and he is devoid of hair. For the third verse, in which he notes that an eagle has eaten out his eyes, Kožená darkens her tone most satisfyingly, with an eerie portamento for the final repetition of "but you are good and noble" (to which the orchestra responds with ghoulish bassoon trills and a closing thwack of the timpani).

Also at Theresienstadt at the same time as Krása was Gideon Klein, whose arrangement of a Jewish lullaby concludes the album. Yet again Kožená's sumptuous sound is reinforced by warm, poignant support from Rattle and his Czech players, making for a moving coda to a captivating offering, consistently full of bewitching magnetism and polish.