Alice Coote has been successfully portraying men for years, but usually she’s done it with aid of wigs and costumes, in breeches roles like Orfeo, Idamante and Octavian. This disc, recorded live at the Wigmore Hall last year, finds her essaying a different sort of male role: that of the haunted protagonist in Schubert’s Winterreise.

Coote is not the first female singer to take on the cycle, but it’s still predominantly the domain of tenors (the voice for which the songs were originally written) and baritones. In Coote, Schubert’s great and harrowing work finds yet another distinctive interpreter. Her velvety, contralto-ish voice is laced with mournful sweetness, and she takes a refreshingly simple, naturalistic approach: there’s no micromanaging of phrases or belaboured angst, just a subtle dissection of a disintegrating soul, whose occasional outpourings – the tempestuous Der stürmische Morgen, for instance, or the tearful urgency of Erstarrung – are made all the more potent by the slow burn which precedes them.

Coote has a full and telling palette of vocal colours at her disposal, from an eerily pretty Wasserflut to the introspective glow of Der greise Kopf and the stripped- back tone of Die Krähe. She’s not afraid to let a slightly husky, raw quality creep into her singing, particularly towards the end of the cycle; sensitively applied, it adds to the uneasy beauty of her performance. Julius Drake’s masterful playing makes its mark from the outset, matching both the restraint and gathering darkness of Coote’s Gute Nacht, and the pair continues in touching sympathy; Drake’s touch is forthright but never heavy- handed, and he deftly weaves each song’s intricacies into the cycle’s desolate sweep. Audience noise is limited to a richly deserved ovation – and only after Der Leiermann has been allowed to dissolve achingly into silence.