The modern singer preparing his Winterreise has a decision to make along lines which probably never even presented themselves to his predecessors of perhaps 20 years ago. Then, I would say, it was assumed that you were singing Schubert’s masterpiece for, and as, yourself or Everyman. Now the question is whether (or to what extent) you are singing as a character – the Winterreise-man, an objective creation, an operatic role confined to dramatic monologue. Werner Güra appears to have gone as far in that direction as any I can think of.

This Winterreise-man is, if not “mad” then seriously “disturbed” or unhinged. He is given to secretive, wild-eyed confidings, to sudden changes of mood (singing softly one moment, desperately loud the next). His enunciation may be deadpan, almost expressionless, or it may stab emphatically – and the pianist will do the same. To take for one single example (out of many) “Frühlingstraum”, the song which is generally felt to be exceptional in the sweetness of its lyricism: here it is very much a song in character, almost a split personality, the music-box idyll ruptured by stabbing chords and fierce declamation. But after the pause before “Die Post” comes a gradual change: the fever subsides, the voice qualities suggesting a partly self-dramatised wildness are no longer heard, and the desolation of reality becomes a fact to be recognised and accepted. At the point where others grow into madness, Güra’s calm is, in this context, still more terrible.

I say “Güra”, but mean to include the pianist, Christoph Berner, whose playing is the very enactment of the man, his apprehensions and his setting. Güra himself has probably the most elegantly ingratiating voice of all the present-day Lieder-singing tenors and it has often seemed that he prefers to use it for any purpose rather than elegant ingratiation; but this is certainly a performance to take to heart.