Robert Holl’s craggy bass-baritone is an undeniably imposing instrument. He is also an intelligent, thoughtful artist who can soften his voluminous tone in, say, a tenderly rueful “Die Taubenpost”. “Der Atlas” has a grizzled, Lear-like grandeur and he “lives” the delusional horror of “Der Doppelgänger” with appalled intensity. Yet my enjoyment of Holl’s singing has always been hampered by the unevenness of his vocal production. It hasn’t improved with age. Legato is virtually non-existent, the quality of individual tones can vary markedly, and high notes tend to be either blanched and unsupported (soft) or woofy-wobbly (loud).

The mysterious, melancholy twilit scene “Am Meer” is certainly deeply felt, with a flare of bitter reproach at the final “vergiftet” (“poisoned”). But this song rivals “Nacht und Träume” as Schubert’s cruellest test of flawless sustained singing and, for me, Holl’s lumpy phrasing, with what sound like involuntary recurrent bulges in the line, simply won’t do. For true legato, and with it a more veiled intimacy of feeling, go to Holl’s teacher Hans Hotter, Fischer-Dieskau, 1962 vintage (both EMI) or Matthias Goerne (Philips).

Questions of vocal production apart, the innate sombreness of Holl’s timbre, whatever the dynamic level, makes for a pretty depressive “Liebesbotschaft” – no hope here, you feel, of the gardener-girl responding to his water-borne message. “Das Fischermädchen” sounds similarly gloomy, with no smile or caress in the tone, while Holl’s effortful, bumpy “Ständchen” is the slowest, least seductive I know. This is one of several songs where the downward transpositions of a third dull Schubert’s glinting, precisely imagined keyboard textures, despite the best efforts of the ever-sensitive Roger Vignoles. I’m glad to have heard Holl’s “Atlas”, “Doppelgänger” and brooding, fatalistic “Aufenthalt”. But his is not a Schwanengesang I should choose to live with.