“Everything that happens in your life - the good and the bad - is somewhere in my box of song texts or lieder or French song," said Simon Keenlyside in an interview with The Guardian.

On this live recording with Malcolm Martineau, Keenlyside covered considerable musical, thematic and emotional ground. The recital features songs by Schubert, six of Wolf’s Mörike-Lieder, settings of Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine and other French poets by Fauré and Ravel’s five whimsical and discreetly anthropomorphic animal portraits, Histoires naturelles.

The BBC Music Magazine has described Keenlyside as “the greatest lyric baritone of our time, indeed one of the greatest of any time. He submerges his personality in the roles he portrays, and does it with virtually unique insight and completeness. Everything is built, however, on superb breath control and a remarkable capacity for colouring the voice, combined with flawless legato, the principles underlying all great singing.”

While the subject above was a recording of operatic arias, the same praise applies to Simon Keenlyside in recital - he is not an artist who self-consciously imposes his interpretation on a song or on the audience; rather he subtly allows the words and the notes to speak for themselves.