Magdalena Kožená and Mitsuko Uchida have been giving song recitals together for over a decade now, though their busy solo careers have inevitably meant that their opportunities to do so have been limited. Their latest Wigmore Hall appearance was a beautifully planned programme of French mélodies, with three of Debussy’s song cycles followed by Messiaen’s Poèmes pour Mi.
Though officially categorised as a mezzo-soprano rather than a soprano, Kožená’s voice seems really to fall somewhere in between, with few of the darker, lower-register colours that one associates with mezzos, but an easy, free ranging, if occasionally slightly hard-edged upper register. But it’s a voice that wrapped itself beautifully around Debussy’s phrases, beginning with the Chansons de Bilitis then working backwards chronologically through the five Poèmes de Baudelaire and the Ariettes Oubliées.
