Peter Pears always used to say that he could never have sung Schubert’s Winterreise (Winter Journey), arguably the greatest song-cycle in the repertory, before the age of 40.

It encompassed too wide a range of emotion for him to understand fully before that age, he claimed.

It was partly to mark Pears’s performance of the work with Britten on this campus that James Gilchrist was invited to present it again, half a century later.

This time, however, the accompaniment came from a fortepiano, played by Peter Seymour.

This instrument’s quiet, quickly decaying tone did not deter Gilchrist from a deeply considered account in which Seymour was a close and vivid companion. Indeed, it encouraged a greater intimacy than might have been achieved with a modern piano.

Gilchrist had a huge palette of colours in store. His richly baritonal tenor was especially compelling when the jilted traveller’s emotions spilled into anger.

There was a beguiling sotto voce at the end of Gute Nacht. The bitter inner turmoil of Erstarrung (Numbness) turned to warm reminiscence in Der Lindenbaum (The Lime Tree), its leaves fluttering in the keyboard.

The duo’s teamwork was underlined by the wistful melisma that closes Irrlicht (Will-o’-the-wisp), but also in the happy nostalgia of Frühlingstraum (Dream Of Spring).

The ending was a little too sprightly for a walker on his last legs. But Gilchrist took the marathon journey without a break. He lived it every step of the way – and so did we.