It is hardly surprising that Goethe, the quintessential German Romantic, should have inspired Schumann to some sublime song settings. But one revealing aspect of this recital, which brought baritone Christopher Maltman and pianist Graham Johnson together for the third in Johnson's mini-series looking at Schumann's poets and contemporaries, was that it took some of his less celebrated, less consistent colleagues to even greater heights.
The programme mixed Goethe songs by Schumann, Carl Loewe and Hugo Wolf, with five poems from the first half also featuring in the second. Hearing Schumann's setting of Lynceus, the watchman's poem from Faust, in the same hour as Loewe's treatment of the same text, which conjures up wide vistas and the viewer's sense of awe with masterful restraint, you couldn't help but feel that Schumann's Lynceus was a far more ordinary kind of bloke.
Similarly, whereas in Wer Sich der Einsamkeit Ergibt Schumann gives us a poignant picture of solitude, Wolf blows it up into a tragedy - something projected powerfully by Maltman's crescendo at the climax. Yet Schumann remains the consummate lieder composer, and his interpretation of An die Türen Will Ich Schleichen trumped Wolf's for subtle complexity.
This concert's other revelation was just how much Maltman has progressed. Gone is the nervous, penguin-suited young singer who stood stiffly on this platform a few years ago; now, relaxed, sharp-suited and unselfconscious, he looks and sounds as if he belongs here, eking out every available colour from what has developed into a remarkably flexible voice, his high notes as open as many tenors'. The partnership seems to suit Johnson too, who contributed more focused, soloistic playing than we have sometimes heard from him recently.
Loewe's Sei Mir Heute Nichts Zuwider, a burly drinking song, was missing nothing but the lederhosen; but the real highlights were Maltman's rapt, controlled performance of Schumann's Nachtlied, and, at the other end of the spectrum, his wickedly characterised telling of the Sorcerer's Apprentice story in Loewe's Der Zauberlehrling.
