Japanese coloratura soprano Akiko Nakajima is, to put it mildly, something of an unknown quantity as far as UK audiences are concerned. A winner of the Australian Singing Competition, she first made her name at the Sydney Opera House, before heading for Vienna, where her performances in Lucia di Lammermoor at the Volksoper were greeted with glowing notices. Her Wigmore debut recital was accompanied by all the appurtenances of established stardom - a CD-signing session after the concert, an invitation in the programme to visit her website, and so on. Whether she quite merits such adulation, however, is, on this showing, open to question.

Her programme was ambitious - a selection of rarities about shepherdesses and odalisques for the first half, Japanese songs and familiar lieder by Strauss and Wolf for the second. The first half was cleverly put together to display her technique, though it also revealed occasional imperfections. Her voice is big with a touch of metal in it. Her high notes are thrilling, her soft singing, hampered by a pulse in the sound, less secure and appealing.

Rossini's La Pastorella Delle Alpe showed off some whiplash staccatos, a group of songs by Catalani allowed us to appreciate her sculpted legato. Parisotti's Se Tu M'Ami, however, exposed a tendency to force her deeper registers, a problem that hampered the second half. Wolf's Kennst Du das Land lay uncomfortably low. The pulse in the sound got in the way in So Lasst Mich Scheinen. She hasn't yet quite got the measure of Strauss's long phrases. The fearsomely slow speeds she adopted here didn't help, nor did her pianist, the Dane Niels Muus, who was more often than not sluggish and graceless.