The Magelone Romances – an anthology rather than a true cycle – have never been a Brahmsian favourite. Ludwig Tieck’s picaresque novella puts a Romantic gloss on an old chivalric tale, full of arbitrary twists and incredible coincidences; and from the poems alone it is impossible to piece together the story. Many of the songs are long and episodic, with shifts between quasi-folksong simplicity and operatic expansiveness. Only one or two, most obviously the exquisite lullaby ‘Ruhe, Süssliebchen’, have an immediate lyrical allure. The piano parts – to dub them accompaniments would be slanderous – are probably the most challenging in all Brahms’s songs. Yet without effacing memories of Fassbaender (Teldec, 10/94), and of Fischer-Dieskau, in his various recordings with Sviatoslav Richter, Maltman and the ever-sensitive Johnson (momentarily stretched only in the arpeggio torrent of ‘Verzweiflung’) make a compelling, illuminating partnership. Maltman’s mellow baritone, with its distinctively plangent, tenorish upper register, is always easy on the ear.

Maltman is less volatile than either Fischer-Dieskau or Fassbaender, more restrained in his ardour. In the fifth song, ‘So willst du des Armen’, he and Johnson seem to stress Peter’s shyness and hesitancy over his feelings of exhilaration. But Maltman vividly catches both the vehemence and the pathos of ‘Verzweiflung’, and excels in tenderness and inwardness, whether in the anxious expectation of ‘Liebe kam aus fernen Landen’ or the doleful Schubertian waltz of ‘Wie schnell verschwindet’.

Quibbles centre on Maltman’s less than scrupulous legato – mitigating pleasure in a rapt performance of ‘Ruhe, Süssliebchen’ – and on some slightly cautious tempi. In the opening song Peter rides out into the world at a very steady canter; and Fischer-Dieskau and Richter make a gossamer scherzo out of Sulima’s siren-song (‘Geliebter, wo zaudert dein irrender Fuss?’) where Maltman and Johnson sound more earthbound. I would also have liked a rather more forward placing of the piano. But enjoyment far outweighed any misgivings.