While Schubert occasionally set texts by major poets such as Goethe, Schiller and Heine, the bulk of his song output makes use of the works of lesser contemporaries who were also often his friends. The focus of this recital by the Dutch bass-baritone Robert Holl and pianist Andras Schiff was on settings of poems by the likes of Franz von Schober and Johann Mayrhofer, with each of whom Schubert lived for a time, as well as others mostly from his immediate circle.

Holl, who is approaching 60, possesses an ample and finely produced voice that shows few signs of age. It's not an instrument with a great range of colour, however; nor is he one of those lieder singers who homes in on particular words to burn them into the listener's memory. Yet there was something compelling about a platform manner that had about it something reticent, even awkward, with few physical gestures to match the content of the songs, and these often seemingly uncoordinated.

And there was a definite sense of communion with his pianist, whose own lack of showiness led sometimes to an under-emphasised approach to characteristic details of Schubert's writing. But his general sobriety matched well with Holl's circumspection and with the dour sentiments of such typical offerings as the gravedigger longing for his own death in Totengrabers Heimweh, or the resigned attitude to life's disappointments that shadows Der Winterabend.

The repertoire was well chosen to play to Holl's strengths as an exponent of inner sorrow and outward isolation, both displayed to the full in the mammoth last item on the programme, Einsamkeit, a wide-ranging, cantata-like disquisition on solitude that was a natural conclusion to a weighty if monochrome programme.