the intense focus and concentration of both performers is confirmed visually. And the four cameramen offer simple, unfussy shots...this is no recital with a live audience: it is suffused with the stark clarity and natural daylight of a recording studio in Belgium.

Diction and word-colouring are a delight: we get a detailed, precisely-inflected portrait of the poet’s descent into despair, thoughtfully supported by Gees and recorded in immaculate sound.

Prégardien, finely abetted by Michael Gees's discerning, precisely coloured pianism...Crucially, he 'lives' the cycle as vividly as ever...Prégardien remains at once one of the most scrupulous and moving interpreters of Winterreise.

Prégardien and Gees strike the listener as thinking their way through the experience of the lover as he is himself understanding it. Throughout the cycle their performance is marked by this quality of immediacy...This is a beautiful, constantly attentive, never over-stated and deeply affecting performance of Winterreise, one for lovers of Schubert's songs to treasure.

Prégardien, that most baritonal of tenors, has a beautiful nut-brown voice allied to a Fischer-Dieskau-like intensity of communication. Gees sees to it that the keyboard part for once makes full impact, bringing some remarkably potent gestures to his playing