Another winner for the Wigmore. It’s a very satisfying programme, for a start, beginning in profundity and ending with a good joke. In between are various shades of subtlety. There is much delicacy, relieved by an occasional uproar. When we’ve had enough of the German language (and that is always a possibility, especially after the first line of “Fussreise” with its “frischgesnittnen Wanderstab”), there’s the French; and when concentration is about to lose touch with these nuanced intimacies, the English. That may have its own mysteries, with Capain Stratton’s fancy of the old bold mate of Henry Morgan “sucking at the bung”, but they are of a different order.

The performances are similarly resourceful. Christopher Maltman is not the most lyrical of singers but he commands attention. He is a communicator and, as a singer, is remarkably skilful in the management of his voice, dealing wonderfully well with Debussy’s high tessitura and still plumbing the depths with ease as he does at the end of “Der Wanderer” and “La vague et la cloche”. Julius Drake is his perfect counterpart, whether setting the scene of dimly lit distant mountains from which the wanderer emerges in Schubert’s song or finding the right changes of touch and tempo for the developing romance of Honeysuckle and Bindweed in Donald Swann’s “Misalliance”. The audience clearly loves it all, and the recording is so clear and faithful that we feel ourselves to be part of it.