The songs are thoughtful and the interpretations deeply considered. Tenor Mark Padmore sidles in with an artless tone and only gradually unfurls the fronds of his full voice across the Haydn rarities that open this recital. Thereafter each setting sounds like a spontaneous utterance, every poem a freshly spun thought. Before long he is floating irresistible legato lines in Mozart’s ‘Abendempfindung’, then rattling off the Enlightenment-flavoured Little German Cantata K619 with its exhortation to 'Love order, proportion and harmony!'.
The main attraction is Beethoven, with eight lieder and a song cycle. An die ferne Geliebte finds fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout on inspired form: his transitions between songs are seamless, the extended lead-in to ‘Es kehret der Maien’ notably elegant. Each of the six numbers is grateful on the voice and, with tenor and player exquisitely unified, balm for the ear, not least in the touching farewell as the singer offers the completed bouquet to his distant beloved.
Padmore revels in the sensuous ‘Adelaide’, (all five syllables of it), while his partner scintillates in ‘Selbstgespräche’ and despatches the fiendish ‘Song of the Flea’ from Goethe’s Faust with deft nonchalance. Best of all is ‘An die Hoffnung’, a heartfelt meditation on the existence of God – something for which this blissful disc makes a strong case.