After the Gramophone Award-winning success of his superb complete Fauré (Aparté, 8/22), my expectations for this recording by Cyrille Dubois of Winterreise were high. It was, as a booklet note explains, a project born in the covid lockdown, with recording sessions taking place in makeshift conditions in January 2021 and the choice of piano – a mellow 1905 Bechstein with pleasing echoes of even earlier instruments – dictated by what pianist Anne Le Bozec had at her disposal at her mid-conversion barn in rural Aubrac.

The circumstances clearly led to an unusually intensive engagement with the work, with the producer (and co-founder of NoMadMusic) Hannelore Guittet camping in the corner of the recording space at the end of long days. The result really is something special, a performance of growing intensity and concentration, which gradually exerted an iron grip on me as listener – right up until a deeply moving ‘Der Leiermann’.

The intensity of the sessions clearly paid off, too, in the rapport between Dubois and Le Bozec, their interpretation seamlessly unified while also allowing space for individual expression (listen, for example, to their complete accord in ‘Die Krähe’.) The pianist is ever alert to the music’s possibilities, her subtle rubato and intelligent voicing helping her to conjure up the atmosphere of each song, making the most of the colours of her instrument.

When it comes to Dubois, there’s first of all a straightforward pleasure to be had from his singing, his tenor plangent and sweet, with a strong but pliant core to its sound. And he brings to Schubert the same instinctive sense of communication as heard in his Fauré. What’s perhaps most remarkable is the sense of character and atmosphere he creates, the intense feeling of concentration as he brings us into the depths of Schubert and Müller’s world.

He expertly communicates the Wanderer’s tiredness and then desperation in ‘Rast’ and doesn’t shy away from conveying frustration (in ‘Im Dorfe’) or even shocking forcefulness (as in the final phrases of ‘Auf dem Flusse’), but it’s never at the expense of his innate musicality. The moments of delicacy are as beautiful as one would expect (witness the final verse of ‘Der Lindenbaum’) and the contrasts of ‘Frühlingstraum’ are movingly captured. Indeed, each song benefits from beautifully observed details, but, perhaps more importantly, it’s been a long time since I’ve heard the cycle cohere into such a powerful whole.

Dubois’s German occasionally has a slight Gallic colour, and the booklet offers summaries of each song rather than texts and translations, but none of that detracts from what is a very fine Winterreise – and a beautifully recorded one, too. Highly recommended.