Slovak tenor Pavol Breslik has done nothing better than this beautiful recording of Schubert’s great study of betrayal, loss and farewell. Darker voices than Breslik’s have become fashionable in the work of late, but this is immaculate lieder singing, as much about the text as the melodic line, but never fracturing the latter with overemphasis or intrusive intervention. His interpretation is Romantic in the best sense of the word – intensely felt, yet emotionally straightforward, with none of the obsessive or neurotic edge that some interpreters have brought to it. He’s helped immeasurably by playing of great suppleness, strength and sensitivity by Israeli pianist Amir Katz: you’re conscious throughout of the brook as a kind of metaphysical presence that constantly mirrors the young miller’s emotions before claiming him as its own. The final song, which contemplates the vastness of nature when all passion is spent, is simply heartbreaking.
