Though Schubert wrote the songs published as Schwanengesang in the tenor range, recordings by tenors remain surprisingly rare. You immediately hear the advantage of the original keys in “Liebesbotschaft”, where the brook ripples that much more limpidly than in the usual downward transpositions. Werner Güra gives the song a faintly rueful cast – he certainly doesn’t hold out much hope that the girl will respond to his message. The silvery beauty of Güra’s tenor and his sensitive phrasing give pleasure. But I wonder if Schubert envisaged this beguiling water music being sung, as it were, in the minor key. Peter Schreier, with András Schiff (Decca, 6/90), is more vivid and volatile, embracing excited expectancy as well as musing inwardness.

Güra also sounds tenderly resigned rather than ardent in the famous “Ständchen”, where Schreier seduces through rhythm and phrasing. In “Das Fischermädchen” the contrasts are similar, Güra all wistful melancholy, Schreier suggesting a roguish charm. Güra’s approach, though, has its own validity, bringing the would-be seducer into line with the forlorn or anguished outsiders of the other Heine settings. If Schreier conveys more sheer terror in “Der Doppelgänger”, Güra matches him for concentrated intensity in “Ihr Bild”, an aching “Am Meer” and a bleached, hypnotic “Die Stadt”. Here, and in the rising mists of “Am Meer”, Schubert’s almost impressionistic textures are enhanced by the slightly hazy resonance of Berner’s 1877 Ehrbar piano.

It is for the Heine songs, especially, that I should want to return to this Schwanengesang, though there are many rewards among the Rellstab settings: a neurotically impulsive “Frühlingssehnsucht”, say, or an unusually fast, desperate “Aufenthalt”. Schreier and Schiff would still be my tenor choice. But Güra has the more dulcet voice, and, in close partnership with the sympathetic Berners, is never less than involving.