The cover art says it all. Dmitri Hvorostovsky, his mouth a grim line, gazes sidelong at the title of his latest album Rachmaninov Romances. There is something in his eyes: distrust or despair or coldness. It is a look that says, “Let me be, for I cannot smile today.”

Even before listening to the album that followed, I knew exactly what I was in for. This is not a happy album. It is, however, an extremely good one, and Hvorostovsky elicits more pleasure in bleakness than many singers do in joy.

With 26 songs, this is an unusually full recital, and the album’s programming gets progressively darker as it goes along, heading in a general direction from nostalgia to despair. The first selection on the CD, which is given as “We will rest” in the translations included in the booklet, is a setting of Sonya’s final speech from Uncle Vanya and Chekhov’s desperate optimism (Sonya is effectively talking herself back into denial as the play ends) takes on a mystical earnestness in Rachmaninov’s hands.

This number is followed by songs of romantic revere (“Do you remember the evening” and “Oh, you, my corn field”), tentative hope for the future (“My child, you are as beautiful as a flower” and “I am waiting for you”) as well as lost loves (“I was with her”, “A dream”, “I beg you, do not leave!”). Only one song, “Do not believe me, my friend” can be called cheerful and even that is a Werther-like joy in unrequited love.

Terror and despair enter the recital suddenly and unequivocally with a song titled simply “An Excerpt from Alfred de Musset”. This proves to be the most dramatically involving piece on the program, and alongside the lyrical “A dream”, the biting “They replied” and the soaring “Spring waters” it is a highlight of the album, serving as particularly thrilling excerpts, each sung with striking text-painting and full-throated, powerful vocalism.

The album closes with a series of songs each more despairing than the last. Songs such as “Everything passes”, “Sad night” and “Once again, I am alone” speak for themselves, and the final two songs “At the gates of the holy cloister” and “Christ has risen” are damning critiques of mankind’s hypocrisy. Some recitals leave you smiling. This one leaves you breathless but in need of a glass of vodka.

This is a case where singer and song are matched perfectly. The baritone clearly understands sadness as perhaps only a Siberian can, delivering an aching sense of weariness time after time, and he is in excellent voice throughout. The bluster or hectoring that elsewhere sometimes mar his singing are banished and in their place there is only his legendary breath control.

In several tracks (for example, “In the silence of the mysterious night” and “Spring waters”) he lets loose with powerhouse top notes that do not merely soar, but rocket to thrilling heights. This is some of the best singing I have heard him do in years. His pianist, Ivari Ilja, follows suit and performs throughout with sweeping lyricism and striking dynamics.

I should state that I have a limited familiarity with these songs. Although I enjoy his instrumental output tremendously and would list “The Miserly Knight” as one of the most undervalued operatic masterpieces, Rachmaninov is not a composer that I listen to with any kind of regularity. However, I could ask for no better introduction to these songs than Hvorostovsky’s stunning account.