While listeners who have known Mozart’s songs well over maybe a period of years would feel uneasy about a formulation such as “charming but slight”, many would admit to a time when they would have accepted that as a fair description; and many more, I daresay, would question whether they are sufficiently substantial to make up a satisfying programme entirely on their own. Certainly I found the interpolation of four piano pieces a welcome feature of this CD. Christoph Berner plays them all with sensitive fingers and an imaginative mind.

And the selection of songs is excellent, very properly leaving Abendempfindung, the most profound, for last. But all of this, I realise, is a kind of prevarication. It has to be stated that my admiration for Werner Güra’s singing is less wholehearted than the glowing reviews I generally read and the enthusiasm of his London audiences at the Wigmore Hall. For some time now it has seemed to me that in the perpetual act of balancing rival claims that commonly beset the Lieder singer, he is giving too much weight to those of text and verbal expression.

In reviewing this disc I went back to a comparable recital by Peter Schreier and András Schiff (Decca, 8/92 – nla). There, in that highly expressive singer, I found a distinctly more satisfying preservation of the melodic line and (in “Das Traumbild” for example) a greater abilty or willingness to capture mood and meaning through musical rather than verbal means. Güra’s voice is an exceptionally attractive instrument; it seems a pity that his art should apparently be directed in a way that works against its being heard to best advantage.