Just in time for the Wolf centenary, here are two new recordings of the work that crowned the composer’s career in setting songs. The Italian Songbook can give a lifetime’s pleasure both in terms of its mastery in writing for voice and piano, and in its psychological exploration of the joys and pains of love, displayed over a canvas of finely wrought miniatures. It has inspired many recordings that match the inspiration of the songs – more than the three noted above could have been listed.

I wish I could say that the new version from Ondine could be added to the list. It has the appreciable advantage of Soile Isokoski’s lovely voice which is – as ever – deployed in an utterly musical way, and there is much pleasure to be gained from simply listening to the sound she makes. Indeed, it is more beautiful than that of any soprano on earlier versions. But, truth to tell, these songs, above any, call for artists steeped in the interpretation of Lieder. The Finnish soprano’s approach, lovely as it is, remains too generalised and a little too remote for her to be able to go to the heart of the matter. You can take almost any piece, serious or sharp-witted, among the women’s contribution and hear how much more subtle, pointed and verbally alert are any of the three sopranos in the listed versions.

Where Skovhus is concerned, the more serious shortcoming lies in his voice. An incipient spread in his tone and a rather tight production do not make for easy listening, especially as he is prone to force at climaxes. When there are among his baritone predecessors interpreters with the tonal warmth and skilled and steeped in the requisite style as Fischer-Dieskau and Olaf Bär, there is no competition. Add to that a pianist not in the class of Graham Johnson or Helmut Deutsch and the new version is a non-runner. Because of a few dilatory tempi this version spreads over two CDs, though you do get both for the price of one.

The Berlin Classics release, on the other hand, only served to increase my enthusiasm for all aspects of the songs. At first I felt a little unsure whether these three excellent artists were penetrating to the heart of the matter, but as it progressed I began to understand how sensible they are to understate rather than overstate the songs’ emotional content and where – about midway through the collection – the feelings become more immediate, the performers came forth with just the right amount of added intensity.

Christiane Oelze’s fine-grained soprano, spirited readings and incisive diction fulfil just about every side of the songs assigned to her – from mocking, jealousy and anger to true love – and she wholly avoids the archness that afflicts some interpreters. Hans Peter Blochwitz, always a discerning Lieder singer, may have lost a little of his sweet tenor’s bloom but compensates with a true understanding of the lyrical impulse that suffuses those wonderful love songs given to the male interpreter, especially the three successive, outright masterpieces beginning with ‘Sterb’ ich, so hüllt in Blumen’.

Rudolf Jansen deserves a notice to himself for his unravelling of all the intricacies of the often independent piano parts and for his outright mastery in giving the keyboard its due without ever stealing the thunder of the singers; his instrument is ideally balanced with the voices in a truthful recording.

I was disinclined, with so much going for this new disc, to make comparisons. That said, I found that my admiration for the versions listed above was undimmed. These songs are so remarkable that there will never be one definitive way of singing them. On the only other disc featuring a tenor, Schreier is a fuller-voiced, more ‘interventionist’ interpreter than Blochwitz: that pays huge dividends in some songs, less in others. On the whole the Hyperion version offers a more operatic approach, with Felicity Lott just too often the dramatic queen. The Orfeo set catches two unsurpassed Wolf interpreters live at the Salzburg Festival with predictably arresting results. The EMI, with a baritone, remains most persuasive on a smaller scale, and Helmut Deutsch is just about as good as Jansen. In the end, your choice may be made through a preference for one singer over another: at the moment I am in thrall to Oelze and Blochwitz.