A huge fuss has been made about Werner Güra. The young, Bavarian-born tenor is a star in Germany, where he is big at the opera houses in Berlin and Dresden. Thanks to reviews of his recording of Schubert's Die Schöne Müllerin, he has also been hailed as one of the finest lieder singers to emerge in recent years. Whether his reputation is warranted, however, is questionable. His Wigmore recital with pianist Christoph Berner was a major disappointment.

His programme consisted of Beethoven's An Die ferne Geliebte and Schumann's Dichterliebe, separated by a group of Schubert songs to texts by Goethe. Throughout he revealed a smallish voice, often silky in quality. There was some exquisite soft singing, but under pressure, however, the tone could be metallic, and loud high notes emerged with a constriction that at times approached a bleat. His breath control amazed, no question, though he seemed to be aware of the fact. When he sang the arching phrases of Ich will meine Seele tauschen from Dichterliebe without splitting them, like many singers, we were being asked to admire technique rather than the requisite integration of text, sound and emotion.

Interpretatively, Güra often played safe. An die ferne Geliebte suited him best, though his approach was conservative. The cycle's rigidly strophic forms and circular melodic repetitions ambivalently hint that the "distant beloved" may have scarpered due to an obsessive quality in the narrator. But Güra missed the work's dark resonances. Some of his Schubert was appealing - he gives a buoyant performance of Der Musensohn - though he also unwisely opted to include big balladic narratives like Der Sänger, where he lacked both the necessary declamatory weight and the ability to fine-tune the differentiation between characters. His Dichterliebe was beautiful if passionless, and it was often left to Berner to supply the emotion. Güra could have been having an off-night. If he wasn't, he has a long way to go before he becomes worthy of the hype.