You can tell a lot from the silence at the end of a concert – its quality and duration testify to the success of the performers in claiming and transporting the audience.

I have rarely – particularly not in a venue as small as the Holywell – heard so intense and long a silence as that which followed Wolfgang Holzmair’s daringly inward delivery of Der Leiermann, the closing song of Schubert’s bleakest cyle, Winterreise.

Performed by internationally celebrated baritone Holzmair (pictured) and the equally feted pianist Andreas Haefliger, this concert promised to be one of the highlights of the festival, and did not disappoint.

After a fragile start, where the ensemble of pianist and singer seemed a little at odds and Holzmair’s vocal tone felt less than fully engaged, the journey truly began in Der Lindenbaum, whose delicate lyricism brought a newly shimmering quality to Holzmair’s delivery – achingly legato but at the same time simple and entirely unaffected.

It has always been the lower registers of Holzmair’s voice that have been its core, and here his distinctive combination of warm density of tone with a slight catch, an edgy expressiveness, came into its own. Holzmair is not a singer who is afraid to be ugly, and there are many moments in this cycle that demand this willingness to push beyond vocal beauty and comfort if they are to succeed.

Both he and Haefliger took risks with the music, breaking down some of its secure familiarity through their flexible tempi and dynamic extremes. The understated gentleness of Haefliger’s accompaniment in which he dared to do less to spectacular effect was heightened and highlighted by the occasional emphatic outbursts of Die Post and Der Sturmische Morgen.

However accomplished his singing, Holzmair’s true skill is as a storyteller. Narrating with absolute conviction with the ever-present support of Haefliger he produced a rendering of this most familiar of cycles that was deeply unsettling – in the best possible way.