“Do you know of any happy music?” Schubert once asked a friend. “I don’t.” Those words could stand as an epigraph to Matthias Goerne’s opening salvo in a projected 11- or 12‑disc survey of Schubert Lieder. Evanescence, elegy and yearning for a transcendent otherness are the keynotes of a programme that encompasses the Attic majesty and terribilità of “Memnon” and “Gruppe aus dem Tartarus”, the disillusioned fatalism of “Der Pilgrim” and the philosophical grandeur of “Grenzen der Menschenheit”. In these songs Goerne, with his distinctive dark, velvet timbre, is in his element. An intense, almost tortured concentration of thought and feeling has always been his hallmark, as has an unblemished legato. The way he bows Schubert’s long lines like a cellist is reminiscent of the great Hans Hotter.

Goerne’s rich bass resonances are heard to advantage in a performance of “Grenzen der Menschenheit” that embraces aching tenderness as well as deep, rolling gravitas. “Memnon” – a typical Mayrhofer allegory of the artist as tragic outsider – is equally spellbinding, illuminated by telling details like the lingering portamento on “liebend” – “lovingly” – as dawn’s rays break through the mists. And I can’t recall hearing the hazardous leaps of another allegorical Mayrhofer song, “Freiwilliges Versinken”, negotiated with such smoothness and hypnotic eloquence.

Where doubts creep in is in the handful of songs where, pace Schubert’s own words, a certain lightness of tone and spirit is implied. Beautifully as Goerne moulds the phrases, the boatman of the haunting barcarolle “Des Fischers Liebesglück” here seems more Stygian than Styrian. At a dangerously slow tempo, the wistful “An Emma” sounds uniformly lugubrious, with none of the interplay of light and shadow caught by Thomas Allen (Hyperion) or Fischer-Dieskau, in his DG Schubert odyssey. There are similar contrasts with the two older baritones in “Der Jüngling am Bache”, where Goerne interprets Schubert’s mässig as sehr langsam and comes across as gloomily resigned rather than tremulously expectant. The outcome is surely a happy one, though you’d never guess it here. Still, I wouldn’t want to labour these reservations when Goerne’s involvement is so palpable and his style so scrupulous. For two-thirds and more of this recital the interpretative rewards are uncommonly rich, with the baritone well complemented by Elisabeth Leonskaja’s deep-toned (if on occasion over-pedalled), often orchestrally conceived accompaniments.