Doppelgänger is Jonas Kaufmann’s latest album, supplementing two of Schumann’s song cycles – Dichterliebe and the Kerner-Lieder – with a remarkable staging of Schubert’s Schwanengesang. The latter, directed by Claus Guth, was captured for DVD two years ago at New York’s Park Avenue Armory.

The Schumann, realised with long-term collaborator Helmut Deutsch, was recorded during the COVID lockdown in April 2020. Social distancing aside, there’s an intimacy here that creates something rather special, not to mention a musical friendship that dates back to the mid-1990s when Kaufmann was in Deutsch’s class at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich.

The performance of Dichterliebe is sensitive, Kaufmann’s substantial tenor weighty yet flexible and his way with the text full of imaginative nuance yet never overdone. Deutsch is a penetrating accompanist, bringing an inventive lightness of touch that really lifts these songs off the page. Each of Heine’s multifaceted songs is brought to individual life, with the singer highlighting a word or phrase here or there and the pianist creating...