Classical review: Schubert: Lieder, Fink/Huber, Schubert: Lieder, Trost/Eisenlohr

Released simultaneously, this pair of discs feature two of today's stars tackling Schubert lieder, with, it has to be said, varying degrees of success. Their aims are different. Bernarda Fink's album is a self-contained recital, which places familiar songs alongside lesser known pieces, much as you might expect to hear in a concert hall. Rainer Trost's disc, in contrast, is volume 28 of Naxos's ongoing scholarly survey of Schubert's lieder in their entirety, which, when complete, is set to rival Hyperion's pioneering Schubert Edition.

Fink's recital proves problematic on several counts. Too many of her chosen songs are slow in tempo, and most are examinations of melancholy, all of which gives the disc a drift towards the depressive. More worrying, perhaps, is the fact that her approach is so non-interventionist as to be both uninvolved and uninvolving. We're conscious throughout of a great voice superbly controlled, though she doesn't give nearly enough attention to words or expressive detail. An die Musik is prosaic; Ganymed lacks rapture; Gretchen am Spinnrade sounds mildly upset rather than distraught; and so it goes on. There are occasional textual fluffs, too - "helfen" (to help) instead of "hellen" (to brighten) at one point in Nachtviolen, for instance.

Trost's programme consists of songs to texts written by Schubert's chums - a variable bunch who occasionally inspired him to risky experimentation. Einsamkeit is more cantata than song and feels as if it needs an orchestra rather than a piano. Herrn Joseph Spaun Assessor in Linz, bemoaning the absence of an acquaintance, is a satire of Rossini and a poor one at that - yet it also allows Trost, among the most versatile of tenors, to let fly spectacular sequences of top notes and giddy coloratura. This is one of the most taxing Schubert programmes ever assembled, and Trost is sensational throughout, conjuring up a unique emotional or narrative world for each song by means of vocal or verbal dexterity.

It is also far from being an album of rarities. Trost opens with Fischerweise - all macho swagger and posturing - and later turns his attention to Der Zwerg, and the marrow-freezing intensity with which he sings it is rendered all the more disquieting by the sheer beauty of his tone. The disc is worth every one of those five stars for that song alone.

Schubert: Lieder, Fink/Huber(Harmonia Mundi), £13.993 starsClick here to buy Schubert: Lieder by Fink/Huber

Schubert: Lieder, Trost/Eisenlohr(Naxos), £5.995 starsClick here to buy Schubert: Lieder by Trost/Eisenlohr