The prospect of a lieder recital by Simon Keenlyside, one of Britain's most outstanding baritones, is enough to whet the appetite.

But the promise of no fewer than three major song cycles in the same programme was one to generate a long queue at the box office for returns.

The first cycle was Schumann's Dichterliebe, that heart-tugging evocation of the joys and sorrows of love, from the thrill of discovery, through the gnawing agonies of doubt to the bitter despair of rejection.

Keenlyside and his ever-perceptive partner, Malcolm Martineau, traced the arc of love won and lost in a succession of powerful readings.

Taking the optional high line in Ich Grolle Nicht was a courageous thing for a baritone to do but somehow it epitomised the emotional intensity and darkness of colouring he brought to the whole cycle.

Occasionally in recital, Keenlyside has seemed less focused than here, wandering about the stage in casual mode. There was little of that last night, though there was a possibly accidental, but telling, bit of stage choreography in George Butterworth's Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad.

First came the enforced jollity of Think no More, Lad (delivered with terrific punch by both singer and pianist) and the moving elegy to The Lads in their Hundreds, "that will die in their glory and never grow old" (Butterworth's and Housman's premonitions of war inevitably colour the setting).

Then, before Is my Team Ploughing, Keenlyside described a complete cycle on the stage, returning to face the audience in the persona of the ghost of the dead man, whose sweetheart turns out to be occupying the bed of his friend.

Riveting stuff, as was Poulenc's Tel Jour Telle Nuit, its affected insouciance and febrile ardour alike dispatched with unequivocal mastery.

An impressive start to Martineau's complete Poulenc series.