For the first release of his new relationship with Alpha, baritone Benjamin Appl dives deep into the wintry heart of Schubert’s Winterreise. It’s a cycle – he explains in a booklet note – in which there are infinite interpretative possibilities, no definitive path; indeed, this recording was made shortly after he and his regular accompanist, James Baillieu, made a film of the piece in Switzerland. For the audio-only recording, the pair offer something strikingly intimate, an effect amplified by the fact that both baritone and piano (a distinctive, mellow Bechstein Model D) are closely miked in Alpha’s engineering – not dissimilarly to Georg Nigl’s ‘Vanitas’ recital on the same label (2/21).

It immediately draws one in as a listener, and the sound is matched straight away in ‘Gute Nacht’ by the feathery tone Appl employs – slightly veiled, slightly stiff, conveying already a sense of resignation, a hint of bitterness. Throughout the cycle Appl offers engaging interiority and a powerful sense of concentration, often reacting to Müller’s words with vivid imagination and quicksilver mood changes: there’s Bostridge-esque bite in ‘Die Wetterfahne’, for example, and an impressive dramatic tautness in the arresting mood switches of ‘Frühlingstraum’.

I’ve rarely heard a more uncanny, unsettling ‘Die Krähe’, and a lot of the tempo choices are strikingly effective – the leaves dropping with nervous speed in ‘Letzte Hoffnung’, and ‘Täuschung’ skipping along at a respectable lick. Although Appl feels strangely detached in ‘Mut’, the final songs are powerfully done: ‘Das Wirtshaus’ builds impressively to convey a biting sense of isolation, and there’s a memorable numbness in ‘Der Leiermann’, where Baillieu chooses to repeat the initial droning grace notes throughout – a departure from the score that’s nevertheless effective.

Indeed, Baillieu’s playing through the whole cycle is unfailingly imaginative, and he brings lovely colours out of his instrument. But there are problems with Appl’s voice: its dynamic range is limited and it sounds squeezed at higher volumes, its timbre remaining knotty and opaque when one would expect it to open up. The baritone builds a convincing – often compelling – performance within these limitations, and the cycle is suited to his approach, but it’s worrying to hear how little of the vocal freshness of his earlier albums remains in this new Winterreise.