As this welcome 70th-birthday retrospective reminds us, Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair’s voice is surely one of the most immediately recognisable of recent decades. Unlike the smooth beauty of an Olaf Bär or Andreas Schmidt, or the oaky mellowness of the young Matthias Goerne, to name just three of his colleagues active in the studio around the same time, Holzmair’s voice has a distinctive tang: its timbre is airy where others are more watertight, delicate where others are robust. He’s at his best up to around mezzo-forte, more at home with considered Innigkeit than grand proclamation.

Holzmair himself notes in a fascinating booklet interview with James Jolly that his particular voice type is perhaps closer to the French fach of baryton Martin – a baritone with a special ease in his higher register – and he’s clearly proud of the fact that, more often than not, parallels were drawn with the tenors Julius Patzak and Fritz Wunderlich. ‘I was never compared’, he adds, ‘to Fischer-Dieskau because I was never doing this over-emphasised consonant shouting, which was prevalent in his later years.’ Indeed, over-emphasis is anathema to Holzmair’s approach, which is instead defined by considered artistry and ravishing vocalism.

Those qualities are amply displayed in this box, which brings together the albums Holzmair made for Philips in the 1990s, along with a recording of Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook, originally released on Koch, and a later Philips album of French chansons. There are a dozen discs of song, plus, a little incongruously, a handsome recording of Brahms’s German Requiem in which Holzmair joins soprano Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz and the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus under Herbert Blomstedt.

Seven of the albums feature Holzmair with pianist Imogen Cooper, a partnership Jolly is surely right to describe as ‘one of the great singer-pianist collaborations of our time’. The booklet also includes a glowing tribute from Cooper herself, and the harmonious nature of their collaboration can be heard throughout. Performances of Schubert’s three cycles are subtly engaging rather than overtly dramatic and are distinguished by the pianist’s glowing, sensitive playing and Holzmair’s elegant phrasing and instinctive communication – you will go a long way to hear a more seductive ‘Ständchen’, for example, than you get in the pair’s Schwanengesang, their first Philips release.

There’s superb Schumann, too. A disc of Heine settings includes a wonderful Dichterliebe, with Cooper’s touch and Holzmair’s legato a constant source of pleasure, and an album of songs by both Schumanns, Robert and Clara, includes a characteristically patient and thoughtful traversal of the Kerner-Lieder, Op 35. This was the last Philips release by the pair, and in his original review (5/02) Alan Blyth summed up their partnership well: ‘Anything of extrovert display or seeking the limelight is quite foreign to these artists’ natures’, he wrote. ‘Each song is approached from within, so that the results are like being a witness at their communion with both composers.’

The same virtues come to the fore in a fascinatingly programmed album of Eichendorff settings that contrasts Schumann’s Op 39 Liederkreis with settings by composers ranging from Mendelssohn to Reimann. The disc happily features a selection of Wolf’s Eichendorff songs, including a breathtakingly beautiful ‘Verschwiegene Liebe’, which makes me only wish that the composer featured more – especially since my first encounter with Holzmair was his superb live disc of Wolf Goethe songs on Collins Classics (9/93), now, alas, long unavailable. There’s some more interesting programming to accompany Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte, which is coupled with Mozart and Haydn, all exquisitely performed. And there’s a special sort of unalloyed pleasure to be derived from a lovely album of Beethoven’s folk-song arrangements, with buoyant support from the Trio Fontenay.

For Krenek’s Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen and Eisler’s Hollywood Songbook, Holzmair is joined by pianist Peter Stamm. They’re fine performances, with both works benefiting from the baritone’s natural way with the texts and the fact that he never resorts to hectoring in the more forthright, modernist numbers. He brings wonderful style, too, to the two albums of French songs. He’s suave and seductive in Fauré, Duparc and Ravel on a 1995 album with pianist Gérard Wyss (who also played for Holzmair on several wonderful Schubert albums on Tudor – well worth seeking out). There’s much to admire and enjoy on his ‘Chansons françaises’ album, recorded in 2012 with pianist Maria Belooussova, which includes a feathery, subtle Nuits d’été and Don Quixote songs by Ravel and Ibert.

The box retails around the £50 mark in its physical guise (the individual albums have also been reissued on streaming platforms). As one would perhaps expect, there are no texts or translations, but the documentation is otherwise exemplary, and the booklet also includes some charming photos. It offers hours of rewarding listening from one of the most refined and sensitive singers of the CD era. Highly recommended