‘Soldiering on” was the expression used by Sholto Kynoch, director of the Oxford Lieder Spring Series, as he introduced mezzo Miranda Westcott. She nearly had to cancel this concert because of a heavy cold, he explained, and she wisely dropped two testing Mahler Rückert Lieder.

The three remaining Mahler songs took only seconds to make their mark in each case. There was a delicate fragrance to Ich atmet’, and an expressive account of Blicke mir, while the contrasting Ich bin der Welt displayed Westcott’s haunting lower register to advantage. In these songs she hit an ideal balance with Kynoch’s accompaniment, which had been a tad overprotective (from my seat at least) in an opening group of Schumann songs – two by Robert, and one by Clara. But the Schumann made one thing clear – Westcott’s cold had not affected her wide-ranging expressive powers, as she switched from Robert’s perky Volksliedchen to Clara’s sad setting of the line: “If you love for youth, O love not me!”

Giving the singer a rest, Sholto Kynoch, Nicola Smedley (flute), and Elizabeth Stone (cello) infused a rural smell into Weber’s Trio in G minor, Op 63 – why is this delicious work not better known? Particularly atmospheric were the rising and falling wind in the opening Allegro, and the cheerful birds in the Scherzo.

Westcott ranged far and wide in the rest of her programme, choosing songs by Judith Weir, Ravel and de Falla. By now seeming confident that her voice would not fail her, she really let rip in Ravel’s Aoua!, and showed a strong instinct for comedy in de Falla’s Jota: “Now I bid you farewell, your house and your window too, and even . . . your mother”.

“If she’s like this with a cold, she must be pretty damned good normally,” opined a neighbour. Absolutely.