Schubert: Winterreise

An illustrious group of women have recorded Schubert’s Winterreise—a set of 24 songs for voice and piano, which was finished in 1827—including Lotte Lehmann, Brigitte Fassbaender, Christa Ludwig and, the most distinguished among them, British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote. Here, Joyce DiDonato stamps her own mark on the traditionally male-centred cycle. Taken from staged performances in New York, it sees the American mezzo assume the role of the “lost love”—the woman who rejected the cycle’s narrator and who is telling her side of the story. Aided by the wonderfully sensitive piano playing of Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, DiDonato uses her beautiful voice and well-known dramatic instincts to powerful and genuinely communicative effect.