CD: Schubert: Winterreise: Stutzmann/ Sodergren

The French contralto Nathalie Stutzmann is not the first female singer to tackle a cycle usually thought of as a male preserve. There have been versions by women dating back to Lotte Lehmann in the early 1940s, and more recently Christa Ludwig, Brigitte Fassbaender and Margaret Price.

It is to Stuzmann's credit that her performance of Winterreise is good enough to be compared with those formidable artists, even if there are a few high-register passages when her highly distinctive tone becomes slightly forced.

With pianist Inger Södergren she plots an assured course through the work's twists and turns, avoiding the psychological extremes of some of her predecessors, though Stuzmann still generates much more of the sense of a soul in extremis than some of her recent male rivals.