Simon Keenlyside is such a compelling stage performer, capable, as the recent Covent Garden Don Giovanni demonstrated, of rescuing a production through the sheer physicality of his theatrical presence, that in the concert hall he can sometimes seem confined and his talents under exploited.

But Schubert's Die Winterreise does present a dramatic challenge of a special and demanding kind and last night in that work at the Wigmore Hall he showed how acute and concentrated his sense of inner drama can be.

There were few visible signs of emotion, no extravagant gestures of any kind. Keenlyside remained stock still throughout, mapping the emotional journey of the song cycle's protagonist through the nuances and shadings of the vocal line. It was lieder singing of maximum refinement and intelligence,with everything executed with the minimum of fuss.

There was none of the knowing, interventionist interpretation for which Fischer-Dieskau used to be so admired, or the arid calculation of Matthias Goerne.

Keenlyside's response to the text seemed spontaneous, yet there was always the sense that each song was projected as a unity, and not broken up by a preoccupation with every passing sensation. The protagonist he presented rejected all suggestions of self-pity, even as his alienation became more acute. This traveller on his winter's journey remained defiant rather than despairing.

In the second half of the cycle, as the imagery becomes more vivid, and everyday objects - the crow, the signpost, the phantom suns - increase the sense of unhinged reality, so Keenlyside allowed his vocal range to expand, until he sang the final Der Leiermann in a tone purged of colour.

It was effective, though Graham Johnson's piano playing, for all its authority, never mapped the journey so starkly; there was always something too genteel about the accompaniments, and that is not a word to describe what Keenlyside achieved.