The Oxford lieder festival makes a point of mixing recitals by up-and-coming singers with appearances by established international artists. It always ends with a high-profile concert too, and so the finale of this year’s fortnight-long event was a programme given by one of the outstanding lieder singers of of our time, the German tenor Christoph Prégardien, who was partnered by Roger Vignoles in a programme of Mahler, Schubert and Schumann.

Prégardien may now be nearing the age at which many singers turn their attention to giving masterclasses rather than vocally demanding recitals, but there were only a few hints that his voice was no longer the intensely flexible instrument it once was. One or two phrases were taken down an octave, and perhaps there was more use of head voice and falsetto than a younger singer might have used, but it was all fused into a seamless whole with such conviction and such intense musical awareness that nothing ever jarred or seemed out of place.

On the contrary, much of what Prégardien did was a revelation, with such immaculate diction and attention to each musical detail that the audience hung on every word. The four songs of Mahler’s Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen, so often presented as expressions of youthful self-pity, became a genuinely dramatic scenario, the tragedy searingly convincing. And the settings of Heine from Schubert’s final collection Schwanengesang became a series of vividly etched portraits, all achieved by Prégardien and Vignoles without any hint of caricature or exaggeration, and with the integrity of each musical line always rigorously respected.

Prégardien ended with Dichterliebe, neatly looking forward to next year’s festival, which will feature all of Schumann’s songs. But if any of those performances comes close to matching this one for its complete involvement with this lyrical world and its bittersweet layering of emotions, we will be lucky indeed. This was Lieder singing of the very highest class.