Few singers these days have either the force of personality or the box-office draw to be able to present Winterreise in the 2800-seat Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall. And one can’t help wondering, especially having read the brief description of its modest first outing ‘in the house of Franz von Schober’ in Richard Stokes’s booklet essay, what the composer would have made of his ‘gloomy’ cycle hitting the big time in this performance from Joyce DiDonato and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

The performance space arguably informs DiDonato’s approach as much as her professed interpretative way into the work: to see it from the woman’s point of view – specifically of the woman who is the cause of our wanderer’s woes. In a booklet note, she cites Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther, the object of a similar infatuation (and a role she has, of course, sung numerous times).

In DiDonato’s hands, then, we have something very different from other famous mezzos’ interpretations: the searingly personal approach of Brigitte Fassbaender (EMI/Warner, 7/90), for example, or the more generalised grandeur of Christa Ludwig – another star mezzo joined at the piano by a Metropolitan Opera music director (DG, 6/88 – nla). Her ‘Gute Nacht’ conveys tearfulness rather than despair; you sense the girl’s forgiveness and tenderness shine through in ‘Der Lindenbaum’. Throughout, emotional generosity takes precedence over bitterness and frustration, sympathy replaces hand-wringing despair, love replaces narcissism.

There’s a luxuriousness, not least in the healthy shine of DiDonato’s bright mezzo, that suggests these wintry episodes are being imagined from within the woman’s warm and cosy home, perhaps many years later. And it feels natural, in the context, to have moments of near-operatic grandeur: one imagines DiDonato collapsing dramatically to the ground in despair at the end of ‘Erstarrung’, for example. The portamento at the end of ‘Irrlicht’ might raise a Schubertian eyebrow or two but the mezzo’s commitment to the music and the drama is unmistakable – and moving in its honesty and directness.

Nézet-Séguin provides robust, big playing as, no doubt, the occasion and venue required. The recorded sound is good, with minimal audience noise, which occasionally disappears – most notably in a powerful ‘Der Leiermann’ – suggesting perhaps a patching session, even though a couple of slips with the text remain.

Some traditionalists might quibble – either at the basic premise or at individual details – but ultimately it’s difficult not to be persuaded by the sheer emotional scale and conviction of this handsome performance.