We might expect Maltman's thin, insinuating softer tones, especially the high ones, to sound tenor-y, but not this vocal prestidigitator's tones. Rather, his high, fluting pitches sound more like the eerie, yet often exquisite high, soft tones of a bass, corresponding to his lower bass-like quality. Hugo Wolf's “Die Geister am Mummelsee” (The Spirits on Lake Mummel), one of several scary ballads featured on Maltman's program, was a case in point. The poet Eduard Mörike, a favorite of Wolf, depicts the scene of a ghastly royal funeral cortège that descends a mountain at midnight, torches held aloft, to walk across the lake, disappear through a watery gate in the middle, then re-emerge and glide menacingly towards the shore — and the onlooker, who flees for his life. Two examples of this second voice, the first from the Wolf song: the high, spectral tone of “. . . es geisten die Nebel am Ufer dahin” (The mist, like a wraith, hovers over the shore). And, in Carl Loewe's scary ballad, “Herr Oluf,” this time adding a nasty edge to the light quality, he depicts the sweetly venomous Erlking's daughter (a spiteful lot, the whole family), who entraps Lord Oluf.

Then, Maltman can call on a different kind of light tone, this one colored in pastels, tender and caressing. He used this voice for “Let Beauty Awake,” from Songs of Travel, Ralph Vaughan Williams' stirring settings of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. These nine settings evoke wistful longing, and they formed a lyrical core to the program. “Youth and Love,” a quiet, inward center of the group, shimmered above arpeggio chords in the piano. The singer once again exhibited consummate control of diction in, for example, the word “stretches,” in which the second vowel, a weak one, lived (and came blazingly alive) at the exact meeting-place of three other vowels: “eh,” “ih,” and the schwa (sort of “uh”). It was perfectly achieved, and the effect was entrancing to the listener besotted with vowel formation. At the end of “Bright is the ring of words,” Maltman brought the word “remembers,” in the line, “And the maid remembers,” down to a barely-breathing triple-piano that captured and illuminated the meaning of this song and all the others. This performance by Maltman and his esteemed, renowned, and much-praised accompanist, Roger Vignoles, of these poetical renderings of youthful love and roving, was the best in my memory.

Finally, there is the lovely baritone voice that encompasses everything else, the voice we expect when we go to hear a baritone. This core voice, as well as the others, is all used in the service of characterization and beautiful music-making. Examples: The exclamation “O,” which ends every stanza of Loewe's ballad, “Eduard,” (there are fourteen stanzas!) was differently expressed every time, depending on whether it was Edward (who murdered his father) or his mother (who drove him to it) who was the speaker, and what each was speaking about — a veritable tour de force. Loewe skillfully characterized all three voices in his version of “Erlkönig” (Erlking, or Elf-king) — the father, the son, and the Erlking — even rivaling Schubert's famous setting. Maltman brought each character to life, rendering the shrinking, frightened eyes of the boy and the triumphant, curling lip of the Erlking to perfection.

Wolf's “Er ist's” (Spring it is . . .), exhilarating though it was, seemed almost out of place among the abundance of ghostly ballads. His “Abschied” (Farewell), however, which concluded the program, gave Maltman and Vignoles the opportunity to portray a caricature of that nemesis of composers and performers alike: the loathsome critic (though Wolf was himself a critic at one time!), who in the end gets booted downstairs by the long-suffering artist.

Benjamin Britten's arrangement of “Salley Gardens” (Britten also arranged the three Purcell songs sung earlier), the well-loved Irish folk song with words by Yeats, was the first encore, affectingly done. But it was the second encore, the wickedly funny satire, by Flanders and Swann, of the Victorian/Edwardian seduction scene, “Have some madeira, m'dear,” that pulled out all of Maltman's stops. Here was the gravelly bass of the villain, the protesting, innocent flute of the wronged maiden, and even the falsetto voice of the cautioning mother, all supported by facial expressions of every type — leering, terrified, triumphant, etc. The wily Erlking as Edwardian villain. I might add that Maltman spoke, for the first time, as his normal self before the encores, and presented a simple “sweet-faced man, a proper man . . . a most lovely gentlemanlike man” — oh yes, but with an infectiously friendly manner and a plain, honest, home-county London voice.