To his many achievements, Mark Padmore can now add that of being the last professional artist to perform at Garsington Manor. With the Ingrams family poised to move out, Sunday’s recital was the third and final concert in the series that was effectively the Ingrams’s farewell both to Garsington and to the loyal audience they built up over nearly 30 years. A sad occasion, then, but Mark Padmore ensured it was also a memorable one. A programme change saw songs by Hugo Wolf replaced with song cycles by Beethoven and Schubert, perfect companions to the advertised piece, Schumann’s Dichterliebe. This was an exciting, moving and compelling journey through some of the best song cycles of the lieder repertoire, delivered with passion, energy and conviction. Padmore’s rich, fluid tenor is ideally suited to this repertoire, and his emotional engagement brings the songs vividly to life.

This was immediately apparent in Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte (To the distant beloved), in which he superbly captured the yearning nature of the cycle, reflecting the pain the singer feels at being separated from his loved one, while caressing the lovely, lyrical passages with great sensitivity and tenderness. A selection of songs from Schubert’s Schwanengesang saw Padmore once again in masterful control, seizing upon the varying moods and tempi with great assurance and commitment, from the gentle Liebesbotschaft (Love’s Message) and Ständchen (Serenade) to the anguished, powerfully intense Dopplegänger (The Double). Schumann’s Dichterliebe (The Poet’s Love), with its colourful and whimsical language, was a fitting finale, every phrase exquisitely sculpted, every nuance thoughtfully considered. And so, with the final song in the cycle, Die Alten bösen Lieder (The old, angry songs), the curtain came down on Garsington Manor as a music venue; truly the end of a remarkable and magnificent era.