People complain that classical concerts deliver the same composers time after time. Not this one: when did you last hear music by Benedikt Rand-hartinger? Anselm H¸ttenbrenner? Jeanette B¸rde?

What drew the audience, though, was not obscure composers, but, firstly, the singers: any one of Claire Booth (late, late stand-in for Susan Gritton), Mark Padmore, Roderick Williams and Ann Murray might fill the place.

Then, the fact that the programme was lovingly assembled by Graham Johnson, a walking, talking, piano-playing encyclopaedia of 19th-century song, who also provided spoken introductions, rather uncomfortably shared between himself and the singers.

And lastly, the concept: celebrating Schubert's 210th birthday with a programme of "Schubert and his contemporaries" embraced the obscurities, but also Rossini, Schumann, even Schubert himself.

It made for a long evening, not wholly sustained by the repertoire, although no one could begrudge the generosity of spirit.

Johnson's piano-playing occasionally fell short on charm and not all the singing sounded at home, but Padmore and Williams delivered both intensity and delicacy, even in music that did not entirely merit it.

Not that the unknown pieces were all negligible. In H¸ttenbrenner's Erl-king, the piano thundered as if in emulation of Schubert's treatment of the same poem, and Williams got the scale of the drama just right in Randhartinger's Restless Wandering.

If the atmosphere was buttoned-up, hair was happily let down in Schubert's Wedding Roast, a mischievous mini-opera for three.

And lest things got too ponderous, Johnson threw in a trifle by Rossini and two of Schubert's Italian songs, suffused with a wistful longing for a style somewhat alien to him.