Die sch÷ne Mⁿllerin - Schubert

`In these songs we never meet a troublesome thought or a troublesome word." So wrote the son of their author. It is unlikely that the audience at Saturday's recital in St Stephen's Church would have agreed, for Wolfgang Holzmair brought to this unsophisticated tale of the miller's apprentice and his love for the miller's daughter a vocal skill and a depth of feeling which made many of the thoughts, with the assistance of Schubert's music, troublesome indeed.

Even before the haughty hunter appears on the scene as a successful rival, the girl's remark: "There's rain coming; goodbye, I'm going home," is made to sound like a brush-off by a subtle inflection of the singer's voice. After that hint of trouble to come, the lover's joyful proclamation, "the miller's daughter is mine," is less than convincing.

The accompanist, Russell Ryan, and the singer were of one mind in all that they did: the piano part seemed an extension of the voice and the voice of the piano part, and both created a sense of shared intimacy that abolished the gap between performers and audience. There were no histrionics: they were not necessary, for within a quite narrow dynamic range the performers found all the various levels of intensity that were needed.

There is a great distance from the carefree wanderlust of the first song to the pensive lullaby of the 20th and last: each step on the way has its own character, but it takes skill to convert the suggestions of the music into perceptible states of mind. That this was done, with quite extraordinary restraint, is a tribute to the creative powers of the two performers.