Kaufmann/Deutsch: Schubert: Die Schöne Müllerin

Unusually for a lieder album, ­Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut Deutsch's ­harrowing version of Die Schöne ­Müllerin was taped live, at a ­single ­concert, last year. Given the ­exposing ­nature, both technical and ­emotional, of the work itself, few ­recent ­recording projects have run quite such ­extraordinary risks or ­conveyed quite so remarkably the ­tension and glory of a live performance. It is one of the ­greatest accounts of Die Schöne ­Müllerin on disc, though it might faze some. It's big in scale: Kaufmann's soft singing is ­exquisite, but his voice isn't small and there are ­moments when he and Deutsch ­really let rip in their quest for expressive veracity. ­Interpretatively, it's fairly ­straightforward: ­Deutsch's playing has an unsentimental, ­expressionist edge; Kaufmann, ­however, is having none of the ­modish psychoanalytic ­approach that sees Schubert's Miller as deluded from the outset, presenting us instead with an un-neurotic examination of love and loss, in which the terrible ­emotions of the second half seem all the more ­excruciating after the optimism of the start. Not for the faint-hearted, but highly recommended.