Acid drips and a whiff of scorching haunts the air at the start of Figaro’s ‘Se vuol ballare’, which is also the start of the Mozart recital. Momentarily one hesitates, having not met this young singer from New Zealand before. His own voice soon emerges on its own account, however: that was Figaro gritting his teeth and making up his mind that the philandering Count will not be making free with Susanna. In ‘Non più andrai’ a genial, smiling Figaro sees young Cherubino, already a famous philanderer, off to a glorious future in the armed forces; this not without irony, either. Then the Count himself arrives, vividly working things out and not liking the look of them: all in excellently disciplined voice and style, with smoothly running triplets and a well placed F sharp to celebrate. All of this is most encouraging.

Teddy Tahu Rhodes is a promising baritone who began winning prizes in the early 1990s, came over to London to train at the Guildhall, and has had a busy career since, mostly in Australia and New Zealand but also in the States, where his roles have included Belcore in L’elisir d’amore. He is a good Mozartian, though the Catalogue aria from Don Giovanni is under-characterised and the Serenade is too laid back.

The British song recital suggests a useful concert artist, the voice often beautiful in timbre, with clear diction and a capacity for independent approach. Some features I find less reassuring: his tone, naturally resonant in the lower and middle range, seems deprived of vibrancy in the upper notes, and he sometimes (notably in The Salley Gardens) admits the intrusive ‘h’. Also (the pianist perhaps encouraging this), he occasionally presses the pace as if determined not to sentimentalise.

These are nevertheless welcome introductory recitals. We note the name and hope for more. In the Mozart disc there is some lively playing of dance movements, and in the C minor Adagio and Fugue the performance is of answerable weight and conviction.