For his Wigmore recital last February Roderick Williams devised a typically thoughtful, unclichéd programme: a clutch of songs from Wolf’s Italian Songbook, decadently Romantic Korngold relieved by folksy-rustic early Mahler, and the least-known of Schumann’s great song-cycles. Partnered by the vastly experienced Helmut Deutsch, Williams gives consistent pleasure with his rounded high baritone and unexaggerated response to mood and character. He avoids the temptation of self-indulgence in a raptly floated account of Wolf’s ‘Sterb’ ich, so hüllt in Blumen meine Glieder’ and relishes the lubricious hypocrisy of the bogus monks in ‘Geselle, wolln wir uns in Kutten hüllen’ without resorting to ‘funny’ voices.

In the Wolf and Korngold groups, especially, Williams’s lowest notes can lack protein. But he is an eloquent advocate for Korngold’s chromatically luxuriant songs of loss and parting, tender without mawkishness in ‘Sterbelied’ and sustaining the poignant ‘Gefasster Abschied’ in a bleak, drained half-voice. Williams is natural, charming, in Mahler, nicely judging the whimsical humour of ‘Um schlimme Kinder artig zu machen’. Here and in the soldier-sweetheart dialogue of ‘Aus! Aus!’ he achieves character without sacrificing true, focused tone.

In the opening Schumann song, ‘Lust der Sturmnacht’, I thought Williams and Deutsch underplayed the contrasts of mood and dynamics. Elsewhere, though, they are unerringly responsive to the fragile, mysterious Innigkeit of these epigrams. Rubato, always tricky to gauge in Schumann, arises naturally from melodic and harmonic flux, while Deutsch makes his mark in the miraculous piano postludes. In the two songs that provide brief, al fresco contrast, Williams is fresh and lyrically ardent. He and Deutsch never allow the potentially sentimental ‘Stirb, Lieb’ und Freud’!’ and ‘Auf das Trinkglas eines verstorbenen Freundes’ to get bogged down. Restraint also pays dividends in the most famous song, ‘Stille Tränen’, where Williams eschews any hint of operatic fulsomeness, building in long legato lines to the climactic ‘Schmerz’. Fading into reverie, the Kerner songs are a brave choice to end a recital. But Williams vindicates it with his blanched pianissimo, a wounded, disenchanted spirit withdrawing from the world. As after Winterreise, applause seems a jarring intrusion.