The names of Goethe and Wolf‚ somewhat daunting to English ears even separately‚ become positively formidable in combination. Yet remove the blind harpist and Prometheus‚ exchange for the baritone voice the soprano‚ and replace the formalities of the concert hall with the domestic intimacy of the drawing room‚ and the air is lightened. The first and abiding impression made by this new recital by Geraldine McGreevy and Graham Johnson is of air and grace‚ something akin to Orfeo’s ‘puro ciel’‚ where in the freshness of a spring dawn Ganymede aspires to unending beauty‚ where bells sway white as snow or chime to the voices of children as a myriad of candlelit floats shine on the waters. The anxious heart of Mignon beats more painfully‚ Gretchen pleads in her distress before the Mater Dolorosa‚ and the despised of the world are given a voice in Dank des Paria; but this is an art which‚ in words and music‚ is possessed by a vision of beauty ultimately to be enjoyed in peace. It is no pilgrimage of penance and no journey on a path made dense with the thickets of Germanic high­seriousness. The path is also wonderfully well charted. As in the great Schubert song edition and other albums of Lieder and French song‚ Graham Johnson’s ‘notes’ amount more nearly to a book on the subject‚ or a chapter at least. He illuminates whatever he touches – the ‘Mozartian clarity’ of Die Bekehrte‚ for instance‚ achieved ‘without losing a jot of romantic expressiveness’‚ or the printed page of Anakreons Grab where ‘the notes‚ connected by long phrasing marks‚ drape themselves languidly across the barlines like so many vine tendrils left to grow where they please’. The verbal lights mirror in still subtler shades the piano­playing‚ delightfully free yet exact‚ in (for instance) the controlled eroticism of Ganymed. McGreevy’s voice has a warmth in its still youthful glow; she also has the art of making it smile. In the first two Mignon songs she intensifies tone and emotion quite movingly; in Kennst du das Land? she may be not quite seeing the mountain and caves of the third verse or feeling the awesome power of the ‘Flut’‚ and in Philine she lacks the naughty zest for it. Yet always there are lovely things – as when she catches the expression of the statues as they put to Mignon their piteous question. She is also good (as are they both) at the boisterous Gutmann und Gutweib: a rarity and a curiosity that is lucky to find in Johnson so persuasive an advocate.