It’s not only to the credit of guitarist Carl Herring, whose skilful arrangements – played equally skilfully – these are, that so much of this also works; Kevin Kyle, with his light, unaffected tenor, brings a youthful earnestness to Heine’s poems that, in combination with the sound of plucked strings, adds a whole new, almost folk-like, dimension to this most beloved of song-cycles.

This is most evident where the songs themselves are most delicate: certainly “Im wunderschönen Monat Mai” but also in “Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen”. It’s only in those songs where you really need the meat-and-potatoes of a baritone and piano – “Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome” or “Ich grolle nicht”, to cite two obvious examples – that the shortcomings of the present combination present themselves. More seriously, an overall conception of the unfolding emotional and psychological drama – such as you hear with Gérard Souzay and Dalton Baldwin or Eberhard Wächter and Alfred Brendel – seems to be lacking.

As a filler, Herring plays six Schubert arrangements for solo classical guitar by one of Schumann’s contemporaries, Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806-56). As Herring points out in his notes – in which, alas, he occasionally resorts to hyperbole in order to bolster his arguments – they are indeed influenced by Liszt’s own transcriptions of the same songs; and while less overtly virtuoso, they have an irresistible charm all their own. As does, ultimately, this surprisingly successful recording.