'Enargeia’, Emily D’Angelo’s impressive debut album (DG, 11/21), received the prize for Best Concept Album at the 2022 Gramophone Awards. Since then, the Canadian-Italian singer’s commanding performances of Handel’s Serse with Harry Bicket and The English Concert (Linn, 7/23) and eye-catching contributions on Hera Hyesang Park’s recent album ‘Breathe’ (DG) have confirmed D’Angelo as one of the standout mezzos of her generation.

‘Freezing’ nevertheless focuses on folk songs from around the world in both old and contemporary (re)incarnations, with D’Angelo stating that her aim was to try to get ‘out of the way’ of the music in order to allow the songs to ‘speak for themselves’. The purest expression of this idea is heard on the singer’s unaccompanied rendition of the Scottish/Irish traditional song ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’, D’Angelo’s voice poised longingly at the end, to the words ‘Will ye go, lassie, go?’

The singer’s unadorned approach is evident in other moments as well, functioning as a vehicle through which the song’s melodic and lyric meaning is conveyed instead of drawing attention to itself. These moments occur during folk-pop-infused songs such as the ambient, atmospheric ‘O Love is Teasing’ and the drone-drenched, ominous-sounding synth textures on ‘Cold Blows the Wind’. Here, D’Angelo’s voice shares more in common with Joni Mitchell’s folk-pop inflections than, say, Joyce DiDonato, while French guitarist and theorbist Bruno Helstroffer offers supple, subtle support.

The second half of the album explores the folk tradition from a more classical perspective, heard on Zoltán Kodály’s ‘Esti Dal’, Rebecca Clarke’s ‘The Cloths of Heaven’ and ‘Down by the Salley Gardens’, and Walter MacNutt’s Vaughan Williams-inspired ‘Take Me to a Green Isle’, prompting D’Angelo to adopt a richer, more varied and full-bodied sound. The most striking moments on ‘Freezing’ nevertheless belong to those songs which fit neatly into neither the folk nor the classical mould. Magical weblike melodies are woven throughout Cecilia Livingston’s brace of arresting and strangely alluring Lullabies, while the listener is kept guessing as to what might lie around the corner in Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded: Night Drive. Interestingly, both sets form part of larger operatic works, which suggests that this is perhaps where D’Angelo’s true ancestral musical home lies.