Wigmore Hall continues to share its bounties with this release, recorded late last year, of Christopher Maltman in Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin. Live recordings can be uneven affairs, but Maltman’s performance captures all the excitement of the concert hall and few of its drawbacks – his interpretation is cohesive, his voice vividly caught and unwaveringly fine, and the only audience noise of note is the deservedly vociferous ovation at the end. If anything, the live setting has caught a depth of spontaneous emotion which a studio might have dulled.

Maltman’s light, silken baritone is arresting from the outset, in a Das Wandern of breathless, barely contained emotion. He maintains the first half of the cycle at a slow burn, singing so gently, and with such delicate top notes, that the eventual outburst of Mein! comes as a genuine and jarring shock. The sweet tone of those early songs is barely detectable in the acerbic anger of Der Jäger, and when it returns in Eifersucht und Stolz, seems to mock its own timidity.

The young man Maltman portrays is a sensitive soul in turmoil, prone to explosive rage and tears, but whose delusions (and depressions) are more naïve than pathological. From its softest to its hardest, his voice retains its beauty, and he embodies the cycle’s emotional trajectory with a fervour, the sincerity of which does compelling justice to the material. Veteran accompanist Graham Johnson is a sterling collaborator, matching both the warmth of Maltman’s timbre and his passionate variety of expression.

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