Legendary recording producer Walter Legge is said to have once told Maria Callas that if she didn’t tame her vibrato, he’d have to issue her latest Verdi recording with seasickness pills. So at least Sir John Tomlinson is in good company, his 67-year-old voice showing much Wagnerian mileage in this collection of often wintry, emotionally naked settings of verse in which Michelangelo rages against the world. Ten years ago, this recording might have been great. It’s still a sort of King Lear-style meeting of voice and repertoire, especially in the Wolf and Shostakovich cycles, both written at the bitter end of the respective composers’ creative lives. Rhetorical moments go fairly well, the Wolf songs having particular authority. As long as the voice keeps moving and the words are well articulated, one can imagine the great painter, in the dead of night, writing by a single lighted candle, obsessing over his many hopeless loves. Wisely, Tomlinson favours brisk tempi. Sustained notes, however, become fraught with his yawning vibrato. His Wagnerian heroism has such a levelling effect on the Shostakovich songs (heard in their ultra-spare piano accompaniment) that you momentarily wonder if he’s singing the same song repeatedly. Despite Britten’s aversion to song transpositions, his Michelangelo sonnets are rejigged for bass voice. Pianist David Owen Norris writes about how the accompanying chords, in one instance, demanded ‘spreading’ (his word) when played in the bass-friendly key. No great problem. But returning to tenor Nicholas Phan’s recording (Avie, 4/12) reminded me how much the agility and purity of a higher voice feels right in this music. Schubert and Schumann survive key changes because of the Germanic strength of the poetic idea behind the notes. With Britten, all elements – from surface to key structure, in both voice and piano – count for much.