The young German baritone Konstantin Krimmel (b1993) has been quietly collecting excellent reviews in these pages ever since the release of his debut on Alpha Classics, ‘Saga’, nearly five years ago (11/19). And this new album is in many ways a follow-up to that, pairing two of the composers – Schubert and Loewe – who featured on the earlier recital, and with a similar emphasis on storytelling.

It’s a superb album, and an impeccable realisation of an intelligent, remarkably effective programming concept. As the booklet notes state, Loewe and Schubert were born only months apart (though the former outlived the latter by over 40 years), but their styles were very different, Schubert more imaginative and freer in his reactions to his text, and Loewe, well, slightly less so.

But by building their programme around thematically linked pairs of songs, one by each composer, Krimmel and his outstanding pianist, Ammiel Bushakevitz, bring out the best in them. Loewe’s more straightforward manner provides a welcome contrast to Schubert’s more independent reactions to his texts, allowing one to appreciate the qualities of both composers all the better. ‘I just like telling stories’, Krimmel is quoted as saying in the booklet, and his skill for narrative pacing comes through in every song. These are unusually intelligent, sensitive performances in which he and Bushakevitz breathe compellingly as one.

In reviewing his outstanding recording of Die schöne Müllerin (10/23), I described Krimmel’s baritone as ‘light but not bright, beautiful but with a hint of hazy tang in the timbre’. In the interim the voice seems to have grown even sweeter. You’d be forgiven for mistaking its upper range for that of a tenor, but there’s also a steady authority to the lower reaches. There’s a care and attention to words and a remarkable ability to draw the listener in that put one in mind of Christian Gerhaher – high praise indeed.

And draw one in is exactly what Krimmel does right from an opening performance of Schubert’s ‘Der König in Thule’ that is serious, quietly intense and unusually moving. Its partner, Loewe’s ‘Archibald Douglas’ – a somewhat sentimental shaggy-dog story of a song – is rendered hardly less noble and affecting. You might get more sense of bluff, chivalrous pride with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Jörg Demus here (in their DG survey, 7/71), but Krimmel sings Lord Douglas’s entreaties so sweetly and persuasively that few listeners will be able to resist, even if in the song King James needs a couple of strophes to be won over.

Unsurprisingly, the lyrical songs are reliably beautiful and immaculately turned: listen to the pairing of ‘Am Bach im Frühling’ and ‘Süsses Begräbnis’. But while some of my colleagues have occasionally found Krimmel a little sober and restrained on earlier albums – and he’s certainly not a singer to lose control – he shows here how he can also deliver compelling drama. Bushakevitz sets and maintains a furious pace for ‘Erlkönig’, for example, where Krimmel turns the dramatic screw gradually but inexorably, bringing a beguiling sense of insinuation to the Erlking’s lines. Its coupling, meanwhile, the remarkable ‘Geisterleben’, is teased out to hypnotic effect; only a couple of alternative versions exist in the catalogue, and neither comes close in creating such an immediately haunting atmosphere.

The baritone shows he can deliver grand, growling despair in the opening of Schubert’s ‘Totengräbers Heimweh’ and is predictably superb as the song then shifts to quiet exultation. Its partner, Loewe’s crazed ‘Totentanz’, is delivered with a subtlety that for me is even more chilling than Fischer-Dieskau’s more direct approach – and a special mention for Bushakevitz’s virtuosity in the head-spinning accompaniment.

The two Wanderer songs are superb, too. The first verse of Schubert’s offers a microcosm of Krimmel’s interpretative skill – the hushed opening phrase, the growing anger of ‘es braust das Meer’, the sweet longing of ‘Und immer fragt der Seufzer – wo?’ – with Bushakevitz’s accompaniment in perfect accord. It’s a subtle, moving account of this ever-popular song. The artless simplicity of Loewe’s ‘Wandrers Nachtlied’, meanwhile, is conveyed movingly.

As a final pairing, we get the thrilling ride of ‘An Schwager Kronos’ – another song paced intelligently, so that the rattling excitement of the final verse registers to full effect – followed by the gentle sentimentality of Loewe’s ‘Die Uhr’. I greatly enjoyed Nicholas Mogg’s performance of this on his Loewe album with pianist Jâms Coleman (Champs Hill, 1/22), but Krimmel manages to create an even greater sense of artlessness. It proves a quietly touching finale to an enchanting, engrossing and impeccably recorded album. With it, Krimmel takes another big step towards quietly establishing himself as one of the most compelling lieder interpreters performing today. A gem.