Romanticism is often about melancholy, and Christoph Prégardien's recital with fortepianist Andreas Staier was awash with it. The pervasive mood was, one suspects, a matter of contextualisation. Prégardien and Staier were placing songs by Chopin and Norbert Burgmüller alongside music by Schubert and Schumann. Burgmüller (1810-36), popular in his day, was something of a doom merchant, whose lieder just about stand comparison with those of his greater contemporaries. Chopin's songs, though, are cramped in style and range. The current vogue for them is puzzling.

Among the most fastidious of tenors, Prégardien does this kind of programme to perfection. Burgmüller's vocal writing alternates vast, long-breathed phrases with rapid figurations high in the voice: Prégardien delivered them all with superb ease, while his subtle way with words deflected our attention away from what is, in effect, a stylistic mannerism on Burgmüller's part. He brought more intelligence to bear on Chopin's songs, on this occasion, than any other singer I can think of, but still failed to disguise the fact that they aren't really very good.

Schubert was represented by his settings of Ernst Konrad Schulze, Schumann by his Op 90 Lenau songs – both magnificently done. The Schubert was at times deeply disquieting, with Staier probing the instrumental tensions that lurk beneath the deceptive, even self-deluding grace that Prégardien brought to the vocal lines. Grander in style, Schumann's Lenau settings allowed Prégardien to exploit his ringing top notes to the full: in Requiem, which brings the sequence to a close, the pair achieved a quality of genuine exaltation, as remarkable and intense as it is rare.