Three is a crowd in song recitals, never mind four. But in Homeward Bound, the occasional vocal series he is curating at the Barbican, Ian Bostridge is being generous with the spotlight. This all-Schubert programme brought the tenor together with soprano Dorothea Röschmann, baritone Thomas Quasthoff and pianist Julius Drake, showcasing some outstanding solo lieder singing.

Yet it also included a rare thing: humdrum Schubert. The trio cantata Schubert wrote to flatter an influential singer friend on his birthday proved a stilted anticlimax to a first half that had peaked moments earlier with one of Schubert's small masterpieces, Erlkönig. Quasthoff's smooth but urgent lines and Drake's relentless piano chords had shaken us with the supernatural terror in Goethe's story.

Bostridge had begun in sombre style with four of the Harper's lonely songs from Mignon, his uniquely airy resonance lending directness to the first three. Röschmann joined him as a perfectly tuned duet partner in Mignon und der Harfner, and her silvery soprano was even more expressive in Kennst du das Land. Yet her finest moment came as Goethe's other heroine, in the quiet desperation of Gretchen am Spinnrade, her voice growing out of Drake's restless but delicate piano lines.

Ultimately, though, it was Quasthoff who emerged as the master. His velvety singing of Ganymed introduced a new warmth; the wise, Sarastro-style pronouncements of Grenzen der Menschheit found him deepening his baritone down to a seemingly bottomless bass. He also made us laugh, playing the grumpy old gamekeeper to Röschmann and Bostridge's pair of hare-rustlers in Der Hochzeitsbraten, a deft comic trio ending with a yodelling chorus - Schubert in endearingly corny mode.