Christopher Maltman opened the new Wigmore season with a powerhouse recital of Schiller settings by Schubert, Schuman and Liszt. The task he and pianist Graham Johnson set themselves was not an easy one. Schiller's influence on music was vast, famously triggering, among other things, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Brahms's Nänie, and operas by Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi. Song composers, however, found his philosophical range and anti-authoritarian politics difficult to contain: an evening of Schiller-based lieder gives, first and foremost, the impression of musical unwieldiness.

Yet it's also material through which Maltman and Johnson guided us with great skill. Maltman's ability to veer between full-throated darkness and appealing tenderness is ideal for songs such as Schubert's Der Kampf, with its mix of political rage and erotic regret. He's a superb storyteller, too, delivering big narrative ballads such as Schubert's Die Bürgschaft and Schumann's Der Handschuh with fine attention to dramatic detail. Each character has a clear persona, even if it occasionally involves vocal risks that put him close to his limits.

Schiller also seems to have inspired a predominantly pictorial piano style, and Johnson whisked us away to battlefields, Alpine landscapes and ancient Syracuse with his customary brilliance. Johnson's intelligence was stamped across the shape and content of the programme, which carefully emphasised the handful of truly great lieder that Schiller inspired. Liszt's Der Fischerknabe, which found Maltman at his most seductive, is a thing of insidious beauty. And in Die Götter Griechenlands, Schubert produced one of his greatest examinations of the nature of transience.

Maltman closed the evening with it, and its quiet resignation seemed all the more profound after the emotional storms that had gone before.