The mezzo-soprano Alice Coote pins her colours to the mast in this recital, subtitled ‘Woman and Man, The Human Soul in Love’, captured live (and immaculately so) from the Wigmore Hall. For when it comes to playing men or women, Coote has spent her professional life playing both and has decided the soul is more important than the shape of the body it resides in.

Yes, perhaps the heroine of Coote’s Frauenliebe und -leben is less girlish and more imposing than usual; certainly the hero of her Dichterliebe is a more vulnerable, introverted person than one is accustomed to. Yet Coote’s approach to both characters is less defined by role-playing than it is by deep feeling and slow-burning intensity. If there are a few technical blips – some wavering tone, the odd frayed high note – the quality of the instrument and the singer’s artistry is never in doubt.

This is established in the first, loose collection of six songs, which Coote calls ‘Ein Liebesliederstrauss’ or ‘Bouquet of Love Songs’. These blooms, plucked from the composer’s ‘Lieder year’ of 1840 and a decade later, also have thorns, and in her bouquet Coote finds not only lovesick headiness but also deep wistfulness and even Wagnerian gloom, particularly in the Lenau setting ‘Meine Rose’.

Of the two cycles it is Coote’s Frauenliebe that is the more persuasively dramatic, belying the work’s Biedermeier hausfrau image. There is nothing cosy or domestic about what Coote does with the material, hinting at tragedy to come in ‘Ich kann’s nicht fassen’, and beautifully varying the repeated first verse of ‘Du Ring an meinem Finger’ as Schumann’s fiancée marvels at her new destiny. A male hero in German Lieder would get more time to rue his beloved’s death; Coote still wrings plenty from the single lament, ‘Nun hast du mir den ersten Schmerz getan’.

Her Dichterliebe, though of equal poise and concentration, is less wholly satisfying. For all that this is a tragic cycle, the mounting oppressiveness of Coote’s delivery – reinforced by Christian Blackshaw’s accompaniment, never delicate but here especially lacking light and shade – can smother Heine’s mordant wit. By overlooking the caustic anger of ‘Ich grolle nicht’ or ‘Ein Jüngling liebt ein Mädchen’ she also allows the poet’s moody impulsiveness to dissipate, underplaying both the protagonist’s petulance and arrival at a (rather bitter) kind of understanding. The single encore on the album is Goethe’s ‘Nachtlied’, completing the soul’s journey from the trials of love to otherworldly melancholy.