Following his much-admired account on the same label of Die schöne Müllerin (12/00), Werner Güra turns his attention to Schumann’s most popular cycles, and predictably puts up a sharp challenge to the many performances already available. The only other version by a tenor coupling these two works, an excellent one by Josef Protschka on Capriccio (12/88), has recently been deleted. Where Dichterliebe is concerned, his most recent tenor rival, as was the case with the Schubert work, is Ian Bostridge, with Julius Drake, and once again choice between them is hard.

Güra delivers the cycle with impeccable line and tone and in a style following the best traditions of German tenors in the work. Only in ‘Ich will meine Seele tauchen’ does he stray from grace, choosing an oddly dragging tempo, slower than any I recall in this song. Although Bostridge’s singing is slightly softer-grained, he opts for a more dramatic approach than Güra, distinctly underlining certain words, even syllables to press home the import of Heine’s and Schumann’s inspiration.

On repeated hearing I have found this a shade mannered. You can hear the contrast most markedly in ‘Ich hab’ im Traum geweinet’. Güra sings this in a pure dreamy legato as in a trance; Bostridge often breaks the shape of a phrase in order to give it a more histrionic edge. His very personal approach is underlined by a more intimate recording than Güra receives. Both pianists seem wholly in consort with their respective singer.

Bostridge adds to his disc more Heine, Op 24, and separate songs to texts by the same poet, a consistent policy, and it also has more music over all; but Güra’s choice of Op 39 is entirely justified by his quite beautiful rendering of this haunting work. His classically wrought, plangent-voiced reading goes, without too much interpretative intervention, to the heart of Eichendorff, and to Schumann’s imaginative response to the poems. Listen to such masterpieces as ‘Die Stille’, ‘Mondnacht’ (a perfect legato here again) and ‘Wehmut’ and you’ll hear what I mean, pianist Jan Schultsz adding his own insights to the tenor’s reading.

Much as I admire the two lower-voiced versions listed above, where the singers are partnered by wonderful solo pianists, this simpler, unsophisticated version, which – like theirs – goes to the heart of the matter, deserves a place among the elite. In any case it is the only one by a tenor recommendable at present.