Bariton Matthias Goerner (photo: Caroline de Bon); and Sir Antonio Pappano (photo: MusaccHio and Ianniello/EMI Classics)

MATTHIAS Goerner is a German baritone who looks, as I always think when he walks onstage, like a long-distance lorry driver (tough, thick-set, not to be messed with) but sings with a sensitivity and depth of feeling that can stop you in your tracks.

It’s a combination that has made him a memorable interpreter of things like the troubled, title role in Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck. But above all he’s a song recitalist. And this weekend he’s at the Wigmore Hall, sharing the platform with no less an accom­panist than Antonio Pappano (better known as music director at the Royal Opera House) in a programme of Mahler and Shostakovich that promises to be out of the ordinary.

He’s also back next Wednesday, with a different pianist, for another recital: this time Schubert. What he does with Schubert tends to be disturbing, dark, uneasy; but it’s also utterly compelling, and will haunt your dreams. Should German Lieder feature in them.

• Sunday June 23 and Wednesday June 26, 7.30pm, £18+, Wigmore Hall, 36 Wigmore Street, W1U 2BP, 020 7935 2141, https://wigmore-hall.org.uk

Other highlights this week

Sarah Dowling, at the Oxford Tavern on Thursday

FRIDAY JUNE 21

• New London Singers perform the Brahms Requiem and Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs. 7.30pm, £15+, St James Piccadilly, W1J 9LL, 0800 411 8881, www.sjp.org.uk/concerts.html

• Stroud Green Festival continues with the Bloomsbury Quartet playing 20th-century English chamber music that traces a line of descent from Vaughan Williams to his pupil Elizabeth Maconchy and her daughter Nicola Lefanu. Meaningful programming (hurrah) and prefaced by an ‘interactive presentation’ about Maconchy. 7.45pm, £10/concs £7, St Saviour Hanley Road, N4 3DQ, www.stroudgreenfestival.org.uk/

• Hoxton Jazz Verse Jukebox, a mixture of music and poetry curated by Jumoke Fashola, plays 7.30pm, £8+, Hoxton Hall, 130 Hoxton Street, N1 6SH, 020 7684 0060, www.hoxtonhall.co.uk

• Cabaret artist Mary Carewe sings Britten & others at St Mary le Bow Church (7.30pm) as part of the Summer Music in City Churches festival that runs to 28 Jun. High­lights: Sam West narrating Walton’s Facade on June 27 at St Lawrence Jewry, and London Mozart Players in Walton’s Henry V Suite on 28th at St Giles Cripplegate. Details: www.summermusiccitychurches.com

SATURDAY JUNE 22

• Tallis’s mighty Spem in Alium – the 40-part motet that either sounds sublime or like a sea of mud, dep­ending on how well it’s done – performed here by the Firth Singers. 6pm, £15/concs £12.50, St Mary­lebone Parish Church, NW1 5LT. www.wegottickets.com/event/468741

• Hampstead Chorus sing music from the Bernstein musicals: West Side Story and the two that everyone confuses, On the Town and Wonderful Town. 6.30pm, £10, under 24s £5, University College School, Frognal, NW3 6XH, http://hampsteadchorus.org.uk/

• The Camden Choir is hosting a special feast of music of the Spanish and Italian Renaissance, featuring Victoria’s Requiem and Palestrina’s Missa Descendit Angelus Domini. 7pm, £25 which includes Fiesta! – a buffet meal and wine after the concert, St Mary the Virgin, Primrose Hill, King Henry’s Road, NW3 3DJ, tickets on door or at www.camdenchoir.london

• Barrie Kosky’s unorthodox Royal Opera production of Carmen – stripped of sunny Spanish decorative detail and with the lady making her first entrance in a gorilla suit for no obvious reason – proved divisive when it first aired. But if you’ve seen this piece a thousand times, the determination to do something different is refreshing, however perverse. This revival runs to July 20. 7pm, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, WC2E 9DD, 020 7304 4000, www.roh.org.uk

• Crouch End Festival Chorus sing Vaughan Williams, Tavener and Britten. 7.30pm, £8+, St Andrew’s, Holborn, 5 St Andrew St, EC4A 3AB, 0844 736 5220, cefc.org.uk

SUNDAY JUNE 23

• Vivaldi and his Italian contem­poraries, played by Belsize Baroque. 6.30pm, £12, St Peter’s Church, Belsize Square, NW3 4 HY, www.belsizebaroque.org.uk/

MONDAY JUNE 24

• Inspired by the American song­book, jazz vocalist Sarah Dowling took an uncommon route to her current eminence: born in Oman to Jordanian/Irish parents and start­ing out as a professional cellist. She now plays the best venues: 8.30pm at the Oxford Tavern, 256 Kentish Town Road, NW5 2AA, 020 7485 3521

TUESDAY JUNE 25

• A concert for the 70th birthday of the celebrated pianist Emanuel Ax – featuring the man himself and one or two friends, including baritone Simon Keenlyside. 7.30pm, £18+, Wigmore Hall, 020 7935 2141, wigmore-hall.org.uk

THURSDAY JUNE 27

• Jazz Ensemble of the Year in last years Parliamentary Jazz Awards, the Alison Rayner Quintet play songs without words on vibrantly communicative terms. Here they play Hampstead Jazz Club, 8pm, £15, Duke of Hamilton, New End, NW3 1JD, 07916 0595, hampsteadjazzclub.com