We have a plethora of top-quality classical music performances in Seattle in all genres but one. There are orchestral concerts, chamber music concerts, instrumental recitals, brass performances, sacred music and secular, and choral concerts large and small — we have one of the best choral traditions in the country here.

But what we don’t hear much of, live, is art song or lieder, the large literature of beautiful songs for solo singers written by composers from baroque days to today: Handel, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, Ravel, Gershwin, Poulenc, up to Ned Rorem, Lee Hoiby, and William Bolcom, just to name a few. And of course, the towering figure of Schubert, whose exquisite songs number at least 600.

This gap was filled briefly Sunday night, when Byron Schenkman and Friends put on an evening of music such as Schubert did, when the composer sat at the piano trying out his songs and and new compositions with friends in an informal gathering. In the intimate environs of “Downstairs” at Town Hall, with Schenkman at the piano, violinist Liza Zurlinden, clarinetist Sean Osborn, and soprano Clara Rottsolk together gave an entrancing version of a Schubert gathering.

The Sonata in D major for violin and piano, D. 384, introduced this listener to Zurlinden, a newcomer to Seattle with impressive credentials. These were born out by her approach to this lively sonata, in which she and Schenkman were closely in sync with phrasing and expression, and she used vibrato to shade rather than lathering it over every note. (It did sound as though they had not had much rehearsal, as at times they weren’t exactly together.)

Almost all the rest of the concert was given over to Schubert songs. Schubert really understood the voice, while Rottsolk has the perfect vocal quality for his music and the ability to put across the meaning of the words with her demeanor and facial expression as well as in her singing.

I don‘t remember who it was who said “An art song is an opera in three minutes,” but it’s true. The singer must put across in that time what takes three hours in an opera, and it is an art which Rottsolk has mastered. She sang several well-known Schubert lieder, including “Im Fruehling,” “Auf dem Wasser zu Singen,” “Ganymed,” and “An die Musik,” as well as a couple less familiar. Rottsolk’s voice glows, sometime softly, sometimes burnished. Her pitch sense is unerring, and her technique easy. It’s a lovely vehicle for these songs and I could have listened to a dozen more.

The piano here is as important as the voice. Schenkman is an unerring musician himself, and the pairing of the two made for a true collaboration.

Towards the end, Rottsolk took a short break while Schenkman gave a fine performance of the substantial Allegretto in E-Flat major, D. 946, No. 2, not published until Brahms found it later in the century. As the icing on the performance cake, Rottsolk, Schenkman, and clarinetist Osborn ended the program with “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” (“The Shepherd on the Rock”), one of Schubert’s more glorious inspirations, which we rarely get to hear live in such a professional performance.

The concert was all too soon over and we are again faced with a dearth of lieder and art song performance. Perhaps Schenkman and Friends could schedule something like this every year (maybe not on a fine June night) to feed the perennial hunger of art-song lovers in Seattle.