The challenge with any Hugo Wolf collection is to be the vehicle of the songs, rather than the victim of their dense chromatic harmony, through-composed impulsiveness and elusive emotional tone. Consistent success in any given set isn’t likely but one can at least hope for better than what’s heard in this Italianisches Liederbuch, the third volume in a smartly packaged new complete series of Wolf songs coming out of the Oxford Lieder concert series, one disc at a time.

The series itself has revisionist possibilities: besides being yet another alternative to the Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau/Elisabeth Schwarzkopf hegemony in this composer’s discography, the series’ first two volumes of Mörike Lieder (1/12) had half a dozen different voices, all of them non-Germanic and bringing different tints and timbres to the music. But this new volume is a step down, as one might fear in a recording drawn from a single live performance of these 46 songs. The problem isn’t just vocal wear but interpretative exhaustion from encompassing all of the different worlds each song sketches so concisely.

The songs are snapshots of everyday people in portraits not unlike the populist iconography created in mid-20th-century America by the painter Norman Rockwell, who caught his subjects unawares with candour similar to Wolf’s poet Paul Heyse. Often the poems are dual portraits that reveal the song’s subject as well as the personality of the describer. Lives are characterised by their everyday trivia, the text for the first song, ‘Auch kleine Dinge können aus entzücken’, laying down a gentle law: things small and meaningless can matter the most.

But one’s heart sinks a bit in the opening song. Though no stranger to Wolf (or mid-weight Wagner/Strauss opera roles these days), Geraldine McGreevy’s less-than-steady mid-range tone makes you realise how much solid vocalism is needed to act as a beacon to guide the ear through these highly eventful songs. She effectively conveys the humorous exasperation of ‘Mein Liebster hat zu Tische mich geladen’ with just the right vocal colour but seems curiously blank in the equally broad humour of the hapless musician-loving heroine of ‘Wie lange schon war immer mein Verlangen’. Equally neutral is Sholto Kynoch’s accompaniment.

Though Mark Stone has a warm tone, his slow, large vibrato often threatens to stray from the voice’s target. At times he becomes the song’s victim by conveying emotional anguish with what sounds like technical distress. His note-to-note vocalism can feel unwieldy – though it must be said that his singing is more controlled than on his recent ‘Complete Delius Songbook’ (3/12, 4/12). Listeners who are getting to know Wolf through this series won’t find the Italienisches Liederbuch significantly misrepresented here but one can do much better elsewhere, even if there’s no clear-cut classic recording. On the venerable 1969 EMI set, Schwarzkopf wears well; not so much for Fischer-Dieskau. On the 2011 RCA set, Christian Gerhaher is peerless; Mojca Erdmann less so.