The hackneyed trope ‘out of this world’ is not one I normally use, but as Matthias Goerne and Daniil Trifonov’s performance of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise finished and the woman sitting next to me asked me what I thought, there was nothing else I could say.

I have been been lucky enough to see several memorable performances of Schubert’s last song cycle, including Austrian baritone Florian Boesch’s searing interpretation with Scottish pianist Malcolm Martineau in 2012 – not to mention Goerne’s own equally compelling 2016 appearance at the Sydney Festival – but none has affected me as deeply as this recital for Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

It may be the fact that the 58-year-old German baritone – a singer “who can walk on water”, has performed the work more than 200 times and who was schooled in Schubert lieder by Alfred Brendl, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf – found a transgenerational chemistry with the 32-year-old Russian piano genius Trifonov playing it, incredibly, for his first time.

Or maybe it has to do with where this one listener is on his own life journey. There is no form more personal than the art song cycle, and...