Marking the 20th anniversary of their first concert together, Lucy Crowe and Anna Tilbrook gave the opening song recital in the Wigmore Hall/Radio 3 lockdown lunchtime series. It began with a two-minute silence and a blacked-out screen to mark #BlackOutTuesday, honouring the music industry’s response to racism, following the appalling recent events in the US.

The programme, bittersweet in mood, consisted of lieder and English-language songs dealing with hope and longing, with a wonderful performance of Berg’s Seven Early Songs at its centre. The set suits Crowe uncommonly well, with her exquisite tone, fastidious sense of line, and understated but telling way with words. Liebesode was all refined sensuality, and in Sommertage, the eventual release into light after the dreams and raptures of the preceding nocturnes, was as touching as it was contented.

The rest of it was equally beautiful. Schumann’s Suleika, sure of her lover’s affection in his absence, finely contrasted with his setting of Kennst Du Das Land?, with its agitated yearning to escape from an unhappy present. The Irish folksong She Moved Through the Fair was haunting in its quiet, contained stillness, and there were some breathtaking high pianissimos in Vaughan Williams’s Silent Noon, part of an English group that also included Thomas Dunhill’s Yeats setting The Cloths of Heaven, which Crowe and Tilbrook performed in their first recital, two decades ago. This is very much a partnership of equals, where each almost intuitively understands the other, and Tilbrook always knows when to hold back to allow the vocal line to do the work, and when to let the piano carry the emotional weight.

• Listen on BBC Sounds (available until 1 July) or watch the concert here.