The first question, of course, is whether or not Winterreise really needs anything to accompany it, especially when it is performed with such compelling quiet intensity as it is here by Matthias Goerne and Markus Hinterhäuser. But it’s a question that William Kentridge is naturally very aware of himself, and which he touches on several times in the generous and fascinating documentary that accompanies this release of his ‘visualisation’ of Schubert’s song-cycle.

In fact, I’d recommend watching that documentary first, since it makes clear what this version of the work isn’t trying to be: it’s not at staging, per se; Goerne doesn’t become a character in a newly envisaged drama; the projections that jostle around on the wall behind him are not reactions to anything specific in the text. In fact, Kentridge explains that the project largely uses material that he had produced in the previous 25 years but which was lying around unused.

Once as a viewer you’re unburdened of the quite natural desire to join the dots, to make connections between what you’re hearing and seeing, then it’s possible to enter the strange, beguiling and very personal world that the artist is creating. Goerne describes it as Kentridge’s journey, existing parallel to Schubert’s, with scattered references to what feels like a putative personal narrative, as well as to broader issues of South African history. The figure of the artist himself wandering against the turning pages of a book is one of several recurring visual leitmotifs.

Kentridge’s contributions are deeply serious, and often beautiful, but one rarely feels that the film (or any film), sensitively directed though it is, is really able to capture the event as a whole. As also happens with some of Kentridge’s opera stagings on video, the camera just never quite knows where to look. Here we focus sometimes on Goerne or Hinterhäuser, sometimes on the projections. Sometimes the camera tries to embrace it all, but it’s difficult not to feel as though one’s constantly missing out on something.

It’s fascinating viewing, by turns enchanting and disquieting, but you might, as I did, find your eye simply being drawn back to Goerne. He sings the cycle now with a new and powerful tragic gravity, matched every weary trudge of the way by Hinterhäuser’s intelligent and supportive playing.