Of these two performances of Dichterliebe, one sounds to me as naturally right as the other is wrong. The Johannsen-Larina partnership is in no way pleasing to my ears, but it may be a useful exercise, if not a critical duty, as with the villain in opera, to try to view it sympathetically and see whether that leads to justification. By nature, the Austrian tenor’s voice is clear in definition and tone, capable of softness and even sweetness, but not (it seems) of warmth and vibrancy. It sounds like the expression of a sharp mind with a good deal of cunning about it – this is Dichterliebe as sung by Wagner’s Loge.

This poet may once have been one of nature’s idealists in love but is now an embittered ironist. We might (theoretically) sympathise but can’t be expected to like him – he isn’t very likeable, and that is his curse. Moreover, he goes nowhere without this companion, one who seems bound to him but is constantly showing an independent will and seizing any opportunity for emphatic assertion. Elena Larina (we must suppose) sees the role of the pianist in this score not as part of the poet’s introspective, lyrical mind but as an external, dramatic commentary.

Such may, conceivably, be the thinking behind this performance. The other takes its lead from the warmer nature of the music, tender, longing, eager, reminiscent in its most characteristic modes of expression: occasionally passionate, sometimes bitter, a light or stoical manner concealing (but only just) the hopelessness of loss. Mark Padmore’s sweetness of tone is capable of growth and intensification, and he is sensible to the subtleties of modulation. Kristian Bezuidenhout, playing on a mellow Erard piano of 1837, feels and thinks with the singer, makes his points without exaggeration and misses nothing.

In the remaining half of their recital, the 12 miscellaneous songs of Schumann allow both Johannsen and Larina the dramatic scope they require. The recital begins with the harrowingly vivid narrative in “Belsatzar” and ends with a flash of Spanish pride and colour in “Der Hidalgo”. In more lyrical songs such as “Mein schöner Stern” the singer is unable to warm his tones and the pianist fails to sing, or subdue the reiterative accompanying chords. Padmore and Bezuidenhout enrich their collection of Heine settings with a fine account of the Liederkreis, Op 24 (surpassingly lovely in “Schöne Wiege meine Leiden”) and the five songs of Paul Lachner (a young friend of Schubert), in which they unexpectedly strike gold. Most Schubertian of the five is “Ein Traumbild”, and the setting of “Das Fischermädchen” can unashamedly take a place near the master’s.