The first Brazilian to win Broadway’s coveted Tony Award, in the 2008 revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, baritone Paul Szot turns his attention closer to home for this enchanting compendium of songs by his compatriot, Claudio Santoro.

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Released to mark the centenary of Santoro’s birth (he died, aged 69, in 1989), it partners Szot with his elegant pianist-peer Nahim Marun, who also gets solo stage time with a number of characterful instrumentals. Both seem steeped in the dreamy romanticism of Santoro’s songs that evoke the past even while discretely conjuring the possibilities of an altogether fresh and contemporary present.

A one-time student of Nadia Boulanger and Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, in whose avant-garde Música Viva footsteps he followed as a composer, Santoro’s signature, if the 35 pieces receiving their first...