For a baritone who is such a natural theatrical animal, Simon Keenlyside had concocted a strikingly austere and reserved programme for his Wigmore recital with the pianist Malcolm Martineau. Nearly all the songs in his selection from Schubert, Brahms and Mahler struck the same melancholy note; perhaps it was a programme for connoisseurs, but there were few moments of light relief.

It's simple enough to come up with a group of unfamiliar Schubert songs - there are, after all, over 600 to choose from - but not quite as easy to make them all compelling. Not every one is a masterpiece, and the seven Keenlyside sang were a curious bunch, with the most substantial being the declamatory setting of Goethe's Prometheus (more of a manifesto than a poem in any case). His delivery was mostly deadpan, which may have come as a relief after the eye-rolling histrionics of some contemporary Lieder singers, but was also just too neutral - more engagement with the text, more colour and shading in the voice, would sometimes have been welcome.

Brahms was represented by four numbers, of which the quietly eloquent Feldeinsamkeit was the most impressive, and the one that suited Keenlyside's burnished tone most naturally. But in his Mahler group the voice hinted at some tiredness; pianissimo phrases seemed to lack body, and both presence and intonation occasionally wandered. Sharper characterisation might have made the passing imperfections less obvious, but there was little of the pawky humour in St Anthony's Sermon to the Fishes (the song that formed the basis of the scherzo of Mahler's Second Symphony), or of the bittersweet edge in two Knaben Wunderhorn numbers. The bleakness of the Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen was underplayed too; impeccably as Martineau had performed all evening, it was hard not to hanker for the orchestral versions of these songs, whose haunted sound world is so evocative, and could have provided the edge that Keenlyside's performances lacked.