When that great composer of German romantic song Hugo Wolf discovered 16th-century Spanish poetry, his own tendency to emotional extravagance found a congenial echo. Spiritual anguish, devotion to the Virgin and black thoughts about death were added to his usual torments about the Beloved’s coldness. When mingled in Wolf’s Spanish Songbook, it’s often hard to know where one ends and the other begins.

The collection is divided into sacred and secular sections, and this concert began with ten sacred songs, where the atmosphere becomes as lurid and over-wrought as an El Greco crucifixion. One of the two singers was tenor Ian Bostridge, and it has to be said that this tone suits his particular gift very well. He stood there, deathly pale and willowy, like a St. Sebastian in white tie and tails, winding Wolf’s intensity up by several notches. In the song “Ah how long the soul has slumbered” there’s a line about the soul waking when heavenly light breaks through; this ought to be a joyful moment, but Bostridge made it seem so masochistically intense that any thought of happiness was put well out of mind.

The other singer was mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager (some of the songs are “gendered”, as they say nowadays, so using two singers gets some much-needed variety of tone into the proceedings). She actually sang the most neurotically intense song of all, about a penitent who wants to anoint the Lord’s feet “like that woman Thou didst forgive”. Interestingly, it was more moving than Bostridge’s heavenly light, because Kirchschlager is more grounded as a singer. She actually seems to enjoy the act of singing, relishing the consonants as she utters them, and this rootedness in the body mitigates Wolf’s self-lacerating quality.

Then came 24 songs from the secular collection about love, which has its own difficulties when sung by two singers. The songs seem to shoot past each other, rather than meeting in dialogue, and they’re full of that coquetry much beloved of 19th-century song-writers.

Kirchschlager overplayed this somewhat; she was much stronger in straightforwardly ecstatic songs like “Cover me with flowers”. Surprisingly, it was Bostridge who shone here, just because his over-wrought quality brings out the ironic, stinging edge in Wolf’s humour.

However the real star of the evening was pianist Julius Drake, who made Wolf’s awkwardly grandiose piano writing ring out with fervour.

Gavin Dixon, Musicweb International (Seen & Heard), 15 September 2010

What a relief to be out of the acoustical catastrophe that is the Royal Albert Hall and back into the warm, nurturing embrace of the Wigmore. I’ve missed the old place – sure the Proms has the same camaraderie and the same enthusiastic audiences (one or two of whom where here this evening in the shorts and T-shirts that they were recently wearing in the arena), but there is a  whole ethos of sheer perfectionism at the Wigmore that the BBC struggle to match, even with the stellar guest orchestras of the Proms’ final weeks.

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the hall, an arbitrary milestone perhaps, but still one they are keen to emphasise. And this concert of Wolf lieder by two of the biggest names in the business was one of the gala opening events for the celebratory season. Needless to say, the results were pure Wigmore gold. Great as the acoustic is, performers really need to know it to work well here. The sound is bright and every detail is communicated impeccably, but it doesn’t handle really loud sounds as well as many other halls of its size, certainly not as well as its recent competition at Kings Place. Fortunately, all three of this evenings musicians are seasoned Wigmoreites, and while they all came close to the limits of the acoustics’s comforts zone in terms of fortissimo (Bostridge in particular), all gave performances that where ideally suited to the hall.

The Wigmore Steinway is not in the best of shape, a surprise considering that the Steinway company sponsor the venue. I think the bar downstairs is even named after them. But its tone is uneven, and a number of the dampers were manifestly unequal to their task. It was well played though by Julius Drake, an unassuming accompanist, but with plenty of colour and energy. He is not really called upon to produce any fireworks in the Spanisches Liederbuch, but he really made the most of his few moments to shine.

Ian Bostridge has one of the great voices of our times, but I’m not sure that it is ideally suited to this repertoire. The clarity of his tone and of his diction are second to none, but his voice lacks weight. Wolf’s music is often very simple, and relies on the singer’s tone colour, and that was often lacking here. For all that though, he is a wonderful performer. The variety of moods between his songs was impressive and, as I say, the sheer clarity of his diction is both intimate and endearing. It took him a few minutes in the first half to get up to speed, and before then there were one or two tuning issues, but after that his performance was note perfect.

It is probably unpatriotic of me to say this, but despite the impressive performance from Bostridge, the evening really belonged to Angelika  Kirschlager. Her performance was breathtaking. It had passion, pathos, a wonderful variety of tone colours, and a real affinity with the spirit of the texts. There is nothing forced about her singing, and her basic approach is to sing with very little vibrato and to phrase in a very straightforward, natural way. But she can also do the flouncey prima donna thing when required and, more importantly, stop doing it when it is not required. The sheer passion in her voice is addictive. In fairness, Wolf’s songs are a bit of a mixed bag; many of them are miniature masterpieces, but others don’t quite carry their weight. But Kirschlager puts equal commitment into every single one of them. There are a few set moods in this cycle: religious veneration, sorrow, and the joy of love – that’s about it, give or take, but Kirschlager nails each of them. Damned sexy too, even in the psychedelic curtain she had chosen to drape herself in. I think she may have had a cold, although the only clues were the fact that she occasionally stifled a cough between numbers and she always had a glass of water to hand. But you wouldn’t have known from her singing, which was wholly unaffected. What a pro!