There was something unhelpful about knowing this concert was being commercially recorded. Of course, there are far more people out there who'd like to hear the fantasy-league partnership of Matthias Goerne and Alfred Brendel in Schubert's Winterreise than could possibly fit into the Wigmore Hall. But lieder is an intimate art, its success depending partly on the very personal relationship between singer and audience - and here all the microphones seemed almost a violation of that. In theory, if the disc patched from this week's pair of performances opens them up to people who'd never normally get to the Wigmore Hall, then all to the good. But still, is Goerne really the best singer to take us on Schubert's desolate winter journey? On this evidence, opinion is likely to be divided. He has a voice you can luxuriate in, which he uses with masterly control, and there were moments when that seemed more than enough - the calm arpeggio at the beginning of Wasserflut, for example, and the descending phrases permeating Der Greise Kopf. And yes, by the closing songs of the cycle, it did feel as though he and Brendel had taken us on some kind of journey.

But not all of the stages of that journey had been equally convincing. Goerne was at his best in the latter numbers, tinged with suspicions of madness. Frühlingstraum, its moods swinging abruptly from verse to verse, could for once claim to be an emotional centre of the cycle. But we needed to know what had brought the narrator from the adolescent bitterness of the beginning to the state he was in at Das Wirtshaus, kneeling in a cemetery and imploring the graves to let him enter. This transition was less clear - as was any sense of another, parallel journey, from naivety to desolate wisdom.

Perhaps the simple heartbreak of those earlier numbers had less conviction partly because the balance between the two musicians hadn't quite settled. Brendel's playing throughout had great intelligence, understanding and luminosity; but at first the pianist was a little too dominant, and Goerne was having to push himself to compete.

I'm sometimes reluctant to use the word "accompanist", as it seems to imply that of the two musicians on stage the pianist has made the lesser contribution. But I wonder if, in lieder at least, an accompanist isn't exactly what you need.

· Further performance tonight. Box office: 020-7935 2141.