Through snow and wind, Schubert’s desolate, loveless traveller plods on, doomed to proceed without respite or arrival. Benjamin Britten, himself master of the craft of song, considered Winterreise the secular counterpart of Bach’s B Minor Mass, no less, and every new interpretation is a new journey in itself.

In the hands of the dream partnership of Gerald Finley and Julius Drake, the 24 settings of poems by Wilhelm Müller are meticulously performed with a fine ear and eye for detail and some stoicism; big-hearted baritone Finley opts for resignation over self-pity, hollowness and emptiness not being in his vocabulary, while Drake’s playing is as liquid as ice thawed by the rays of a wintry sun.