Following its Schubert intégrale, Naxos is now launching a complete Brahms song edition, masterminded and annotated by Ulrich Eisenlohr. The pianist will again choose exclusively from German-speaking singers, with each volume arranged around complete opuses. Of the songs here, only the Op 32 set, a quasi-cycle centring on echt Brahmsian themes of isolation and hopeless love, form a unified group. The later opuses, spanning a quarter of a century, range wide in mood and style, from the folksy archaisms of ‘Ich schell mein Horn’ and ‘Das Lied vom Herrn von Falkenstein’ (in Op 43), via songs of regret and unstilled longing, to the radiant ‘Wie Melodien zieht es mir’ and ‘Von ewiger Liebe’, that ineffably moving avowal of undying love.

Few lieder singers today combine such honest directness and subtle understanding as Christoph Prégardien, whose career now stretches back some 40 years. His lyric tenor, with its darkly baritonal middle register, has lost a little of its former sweetness and sap. Occasionally, as in the climaxes of ‘Von ewiger Liebe’ or the torrential ‘Wehe, so willst du mich wieder’, his top notes sound strained. But what Prégardien lacks in youthful sensuousness – in, say, ‘Wie Melodien’, or the ecstatic Liebestod of ‘Wie bist du, meine Königin’ – he makes up for in the breadth and grace of his phrasing, and his ever-alert response to mood and atmosphere. His clarity of diction and relative weighting of words are a model for any singer.

Prégardien is in his element as a vivid storyteller in the murder-on-the-moors ballad ‘Verrat’, and brings a smiling grace, with a hint of playfulness, to ‘Therese’. It’s rare to hear a man in the piercing ‘Immer leiser’, where a dying girl waits in vain for her lover. Prégardien is relatively cool and swift, suggesting gentle pathos rather than imminent tragedy. On its own terms his approach works. In close collusion with Eisenlohr, Prégardien catches all the anguish and brooding inwardness of the Op 32 songs, whether in an urgent, seething ‘Der Strom, der neben mir verrauschte’ or the desolate tenderness of ‘So stehn wir’.

Most moving of all is the trancelike stillness of ‘Feldeinsamkeit’, perfectly sustained in long, arching spans: a performance close to my ideal, this. Here and elsewhere Eisenlohr is a sympathetic and observant partner, rhythmically firm yet supple, with a natural feeling for Brahmsian rubato. The pianist also provides thoughtful – and idiomatically translated – notes on each song. Graham Johnson’s recently completed Hyperion Brahms song edition has set the bar high. On this showing Naxos will offer some stimulating competition.