The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society presents Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis

Although several songs on the program spoke of spring, renewed love, and optimism for warmer days ahead, literally and figuratively, Padmore’s voice often told a different story. Pinched, nasal, and altogether pale in color, it croaked forth in a constricted falsetto — and when a note remained elusive, he crooned.

Noticeably lacking a supportive lower range, nearly all the music rang out with hollowness, occasionally covered by Paul Lewis’s frequently overardent piano accompaniment. At 57, Padmore seemed largely ill-suited to his selections, a series of poetic lieder that chronicle the joys and pain of youth and first love.

Up for grabs?

Two of Padmore’s choices — Schumann’s sweeping Dichterliebe, Op. 48, and Brahms’s Sechs Lieder — shared the common link of Heinrich Heine, the great German poet whose words launched a thousand lieder. Mahler’s Rückert Lieder was the outlier in terms of provenance, but thematically, it was of a piece with the rest of the program. All three groupings show a superb marriage of text and music that offer the artists performing them numerous interpretive options.

It was frustrating, then, to hear so much of the music sound indistinguishable. Padmore trained as a clarinetist, and sometimes his vocal production resembled the squally sound of that instrument: a series of wan, reedy outbursts. That seemed appropriate for “Meerfahrt” (Sea Voyage), the emotional turn of the Brahms set, when the speaker resigns himself to love’s desertion. His voice throbbed with anguish, which compensated for his somewhat overaccented German pronunciation. Yet the cycle as a whole lacked a necessary sense of rising tension, as the poetry moved from the promise of renewal to a longing for death.

Padmore played around with order in Rückert Lieder, pedantically explaining in a series of remarks that the structure is “up for grabs.” The presence of a music stand, which he hardly consulted, seemed less a sign of slipshod preparation than a tacit reminder of scholarship.

Looking for beauty

He began with “Liebst du um Schönheit” (If you love for beauty), a wise choice in this context. Singing slowly and deliberately, he captured the conviction of the speaker, who implores his beloved to look to the natural and supernatural world for its splendor, rather than upon him. Lewis’s gentle strokes on the piano approximated softly falling rain.

Elsewhere, though, Padmore failed to rise to the music’s heroic character. This was especially apparent in “Um Mitternacht” (At Midnight), where a series of furtive cries sounded strained and unpleasant. His reading of “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (I am lost to the world) lacked the erotic ecstasy of accepting death so central to Rückert’s poem.

The version of Dichterliebe presented here included four previously deleted songs, some of which have gained prominence as standalone offerings. Dramatically, they added little to the cycle but length, although Padmore offered a spirited and steady reading of “Es leuchtet meine Liebe” (The gleam of my love). Still, too much of the music sat awkwardly in his range — particularly the usually haunting “Ich grolle nicht” (I bear no grudge), which here sounded merely whiny.

A marquee pianist in his own right, Lewis played with feeling and gusto, though often to the detriment of his partner. One sensed a solo artist chafing against the restrictions of the accompanist’s role, wanting to show off the full force of his talents. At times, I might have preferred it.