Wotton House, nr Aylesbury

22 March 2006 (?)

Alice Coote (mezzo)
Julius Drake (piano)

What the critics say

 Hugh Vickers, The Oxford Times

Wotton House is one of the most spectacular creations of the early 19th-century architect Sir John Soane. It forms a superb setting for the series of concerts offered by its owner, David Gladstone; among his enlightened choices, one of the best was undoubtedly the mezzo-soprano Alice Coote, accompanied by Julius Drake, last Saturday.

Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen was a surprising choice for the first half. These four songs are so well known in their magnificent orchestral form that one often forgets that they were performed for many years in this piano version, with the orchestration added much later. Coote preceded them with a selection of attractive early Mahler songs, including the Schumannesque Frhlingsmorgen and that slightly laboured “Spanish” Serenade, the latter not a patch on Brahms’s songs of this type.

She revealed from the start a rich, vibrantly expressive voice too big, at times, for the room (my only criticism), but phrased with great musicality and with a masterly sense of the song as above all an interpretation of words. In Das irdische Leben, for instance, she brought out the bitterness which always surrounds, as in the Kindertotenlieder, Mahler’s treatment of the subject of the death of children. She was slightly less happy, in Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, with Mahler’s often ponderous attempts at jollity.

In the all-Schubert second half, she was again happier with the more serious songs. In a well-chosen selection, Geheimes, for instance, was less successful than the great lyrical effusions such as Nacht und Trume and Wanderers Nachtlied. Where Coote really strikes gold is in songs with a dramatic format Der Zwerg’s ending, for instance, with the poor dwarf “never to land again on any shore” suddenly struck me as one of the most powerful Schubert ever wrote.

The pianist, Julius Drake, was scrupulous in his treatment of what, in the Mahler, was to become orchestral detail. In the Schubert, his hushed tone in the All Souls Litany combined with Coote’s exquisite pianissimo to unforgettable effect.