Julius Drake Birthday Gala, Wigmore Hall

The term “accompanist” is no longer acceptable, no longer “politically correct” in musical circles, not least Lieder. It’s hard to imagine now that the relationship between a singer and his or her pianist was ever regarded as anything other than an equal partnership. But 26 years ago, when Julius Drake first stepped out on to the Wigmore Hall platform to play Poulenc with “friends”, the rarefied world of chamber music and song was a very different place. Even Gerald Moore, the most venerated of Lieder pianists, called his autobiography Am I Too Loud? – a title more than a little suggestive of subservience. One might imagine the likes of Elisabeth Schwarzkopf responding in the affirmative.

But times have changed and the only subservience that Julius Drake now recognises has to do with the composers. No doubt the starry assembly of “friends” gathered at Wigmore for his 50th birthday celebration were of like mind. They braved the snow and ice for him and for the young musicians who might benefit from this gala in aid of The Jean Meikle Music Trust. It was a win-win kind of evening featuring so many firsts among equals that writing about it puts me in grave danger of comparing one to the other when the whole point of the concert was to celebrate diversity through the insights and very particular styles of voices which Drake’s vivid pianism both nurses and excites.

So let’s hear it for the potent collaboration pictured above, for the plangent, hall-filling strains of Ian Bostridge once more mourning the death of innocence in Three Songs from Britten’s Who Are These Children? The anguished melisma on the words “with blind and fearful faces” seemed to lend the question even greater urgency while the pay-off “And our charity is in the children’s faces” was equivocal to say the least, a phrase rendered uncertain in the singing of it.

Birgid Steinberger gave us Schumann, Strauss, and Mahler of the old school inflected with such fragility that one feared phrases might break from even her delicate handling. What could be further removed from Alice Coote’s Schubert – all deep contralto disquiet and simmering drama. Her thrilling account of Der Zwerg (“The Dwarf”) took us to dark and threatening places that even her lowest resonances were loth to access. A deathly pallor prevailed. Christopher Maltman’s strength and sensitivity fleshed out Wolf and Sophie Daneman found an underlying chasteness in Fauré.

Then just when you thought the dynamics of the evening had hit all possible highs and lows in came Joyce DiDonato to fire up the blood and heat of Granados. In three songs from Tonadillas en un antiguo she made grieving more erotic than her audience will have thought possible. But there was more: sensuous sweet nothings and a flamenco sizzler from Fernando Obradors with Drake stomping the Steinway and DiDonato wondering where those castanets had gone.

They kept coming. Echoes of Gerald Finley’s handsome Onegin infused the burnished tone and gliding legatos of his Tchaikovsky songs and he brought Charles Ives, too, with Drake dreamily invoking the glacial impressionism of The Housatonic at Stockbridge. Was there a colour Drake didn’t deploy and finesse during the course of this multi-faceted evening? His presence was always felt; but his modesty kept denying him the limelight.

Finally the whole illustrious concert party assembled on stage for the finale and Wigmore became the music room of Drake’s second home. Counter-tenor Derek Lee Ragin got personal with the spiritual Deep River, Alice Coote did likewise with Roger Quilter’s aching Tennyson setting The Crimson Petal, Richard Watkins’ effulgent horn cast a glow over Birgid Steinberger’s pastoral Berlioz, and Mark Padmore joined forces with Nicholas Daniel’s transfixing oboe to unforgettable effect in Britten’s setting of I Wonder As I Wander – pure, true, and touchingly seasonal.

Would they all sing together, this rare and distinguished constellation? Of course. To Goethe’s words “Enough, now, ye Muses!” Brahms made sweet harmony of these special voices and for just a couple of minutes they were the most rapturous of consorts. What a birthday present. I might have been envious if I hadn’t got to share it.