Winterreise at Wigmore Hall
The Standard“Deploying the entire range of vocal colour at her disposal, as well as frequent tempo modulations, DiDonato heightened the dramatic potential of the story in ways that few lieder singers would risk. Yet the subtlest of nuances were evident too in a reading of profound introspection.”
“…DiDonato’s voice can still conjure so many colours and shades as she
achieves in songs like Irrlicht (Will o’ the Wisp) and Rast (Rest) or such
emotional vulnerability as in Der Greise Kopf (The Hoary Head). Her shock at
the poet’s self-dramatisation in a song like Der Wegweiser (The Signpost) felt
truly raw.”
“Her lyric mezzo-soprano, now in its prime, offers an opulent palette of sounds: a lambent, gleaming top, ominously dark lower notes, everywhere beauty of tone, amplified by Wigmore Hall’s fine ambience. The contrasting verses of “Frühlingstraum” went from radiant hope to trenchant, dark, chest notes, as reality bites. The cries of weeping at the end of “Letzte Hoffnung” reached up into higher strata of luminosity.”