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Tenor Nicky Spence and mezzo Václava Krejčí Housková thrill with a theatrical take on Janáček's The Diary of One Who Disappeared with pianist Julius Drake. 

Pavol Breslik had no difficulties in rendering the intricacies of Janáček’s vocal language, shaped by Moravian folk music and speech patterns.

A compelling treatment of a richly ambiguous work, one that invited us into the drama.

Best of all is the self-effacing pianism of Lada Valešová, a constant yet discreet onstage presence.

Pianist Lada Valešová was the anchor of the performance where Janáček's song cycle gets the van Hove treatment.

Julius Drake’s torrential postlude capped an evening in which he had been superb throughout.

Mark Padmore's fine Wigmore Hall recital could have borne the title The Fallen Man as two of the works chart the downfall of men, albeit in very different ways. 

Dichterliebe is a Lieder programme staple but performances of Schumann’s anti-song cycle, the Op. 39 Liederkreis, are much harder to come by. The latter work fascinates me more, with its themes, in the twelve Eichendorff poems carefully selected by Schumann, of broken, alienated subjects longing for that from which they are cut off, namely love, nature, and some guarantee of existential wellbeing.