Arleen Augér enjoyed a successful career in a number of spheres until her death in 1993. Latterly she was most often heard in recital, of which this programme is a typical offering. She was always at home in the lighter songs of Schumann, Schubert and Richard Strauss, in which her bright voice and charming manner were undoubted assets.

However, she could raise her game to encompass the sorrows and internal anguish of Goethe’s and Schubert’s Gretchen and Goethe’s and Schumann’s Mignon, where she coveys all the longings of that sad, mysterious girl. Strauss’s “Freundliche Vision” is another more serious piece the soprano understands well, as she does the short Schoenberg cycle.

My reservations about her readings concern a certain sameness of timbre and an occasional failure to make clear her consonants – so important in Lieder – but for many her innate understanding will overcome most doubts. Dalton Baldwin is the consummate accompanist. The sound is inclined to brightness at the expense of warmth, and the Birmingham audience tend to break in too soon at the end of groups.