A visually rather low grade reissue – no Blu ray magic broom here – of three Vienna studio films made by the baritone in 1984 86, relatively late on in his career when the top of the voice could be a little less free. Yet Prey’s charm and commitment to these works (in spoken introductions as well as performance) come over as infectiously as his live concerts. So it’s hard to niggle, even when the setting is predictable (a ‘period’ drawing room with some paintings and a window) and adventurous camerawork limited to sudden close-ups of the singer at the start of the more Sturm und Drang songs in Schwanengesang.

This period-dated case of ‘autres pays, autres mœurs’ extends to the performances as well. Whereas even at the start of Die schöne Müllerin Prey’s ever-present rival Fischer-Dieskau is examining the mill, its rushing water and its eponymous heroine with a viewer’s detached irony, Prey himself is immediately, Romantically there as lovelorn hero and narrator. You can feel his pain as the cycle – and the girl – turn away from him. In Schwanengesang, like others before him (Olaf Bär, Brigitte Fassbänder), Prey has reordered the songs to create a more potent emotional narrative from this publisher-created cycle, here placing all the Rellstab lyrics last (and adding to them ‘Herbst’). At speeds gentler (if memory serves) than his London performance of the 1970s, the effect is to make the work more of a tragic partner to Winterreise.

Between the simple (but not simplistic) directness of Die schöne Müllerin and angst-ridden look at Schwanengesang, Winterreise does not communicate so well, with less of an obvious breathing link between singer and pianist. The determined ultra-seriousness (or straightness) of Prey’s reading leaves one wanting more of the acted-in emotion of, say, Fischer-Dieskau, or Ian Bostridge in David Alden’s cunningly minimalist film of the cycle. Yet, pace his often wonderful stage acting, that’s clearly foreign to Prey’s delivering of the cycle (compare his Philips recording with Sawallisch). The films capture the sound of Prey’s voice well.