Great expectations | 1 October 2011

Talent, said Laurence Olivier, was plentiful; skill much rarer. Genius in a performing artist is rarer still, but Olivier had it, and so does Christian Gerhaher, the Bavarian baritone, who presented Schubert’s three song-cycles last week in a series of concerts that brought splendour to Wigmore Hall. This was singing of exceptional quality and, just as important, exceptional intelligence. Expectations were high, yet Gerhaher met them in full.  By the time he concluded Schwanengesang, with its terrifying vision of Der Doppelgänger, he had taken the audience on an emotional journey they will hold dear when winter nights draw in, and for many winters to come.

Daniel Harding, the English conductor, calls Gerhaher ‘the greatest musician I have ever worked with’. Musician is the word. There are many wonderful singers who have done justice to Schubert’s unique world of melancholy — the melancholy that can bring profound joy. But the singers who can project these songs — the greatest ever composed — with such honesty, directness and lack of sentimentality are rather fewer.