In the second of his live recordings of Schubert song cycles with Graham Johnson, Christopher Maltman gives a bleak, steadily paced account of Winterreise which is at once weighty and intense. This suits his dark-hued voice compared to other excellent but more febrile accounts by the necessarily lighter tenor voices of, say, Ian Bostridge or Mark Padmore. The opening "Gute Nacht" is broadly paced, with Johnson's clipped, footstep accompaniment ever sensitive and effective. The thundering anguish of "Rückblick", the ghostly whispers of "Irrlicht" and the schizophrenic light-dark dreams of spring in "Frühlingstraum" mix depression, frustration and tenderness. This is true soul-singing. Schwanengesang follows in 2012.