Sarah Connolly

“rich, ardent singing of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.” The Times, 29th September 2012 ***

“[Totenfeier is] an intriguing piece, rendered here with typical panache by the Orchestra of The Age of Enlightenment, and accompanied by Sarah Connolly's poised delivery of Mahler's four "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen".” The Independent, 3rd November 2012 ***

“Jurowski’s wonderful orchestra play like angels, the narrow-bore brass incredibly present but never strident. Jurowski also understands the Mahler idiom, with elegant, restrained string portamenti in the work’s reflective moments. Magical. And so is Sarah Connolly’s vocal in the Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen, her voice perfectly attuned to the colours made by the OAE’s winds.” The Arts Desk, 17th November 2012

“The OAE's period instruments emphasise [Totenfeier]'s rawness, just as they point up the anguished detail of the accompaniments to the Lieder eines Fahrenden Gesellen, in which mezzo Sarah Connolly allows the words and Mahler's treatment of them to speak for themselves, without unnecessary gilding.” The Guardian, 22nd November 2012 ****

“While Connolly's dark vocal hues fully convey Mahler's melancholy, her singing offers few of the glimpses of joy that ultimately makes the music far more tragic. Beyond that, however, the OAE provide seomthing all too rare in the Mahler catalogue...this is a recognisable portrait of Mahler as a young man, rather than an elder composer of 10 symphonies looking backwards.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2012

“The sound of even so vast an array of period instruments in full cry is slimmer than a modern orchestra but it has a clarity and visceral impact in this live recording that is startlingly effective...[Connolly] is very fine indeed, sailing effortlessly into her upper register but always with a rich and creamy sound” International Record Review, December 2012

“Jurowski brings Mahler's tragic worlds - both cosmic and human - alive with incomparable vividness...Details leaps out in the fine balance of the Wayfarer Songs, too. Sarah Connolly holds her own against the orchestra's briefly raised voice here...but finds all the introspection Mahler could wish for as bright morning ebbs away in the second song.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2013 *****

“Step into Victorian Birmingham with Paul McCreesh’s “authentic” recording of Mendelssohn’s epic Old Testament oratorio...The thumping grandeur of the big choruses is magnificent. But against that must be placed McCreesh’s tendency to insert wallowing rallentandos before every transition, and fuzzy choral diction.” The Times, 1st September 2012 ***

“the choral singing is a marvel.” Sunday Times, 2nd September 2012

“one of the striking aspects of the performance is the way that Paul McCreesh so naturally places the great set pieces within the context of a multifaceted expressive whole...familiar moments in Elijah sound newly minted here, McCreesh approaching them with polished, fluent phrasing and using the period instruments of his orchestra to underpin emphases and to add vibrant colour.” The Telegraph, 15th September 2012

“McCreesh here totally re-imagines it: the big choruses are transparent as well as massively impressive...and there is no danger of religiosity in the fresh-voiced solos of Rosemary Joshua, Sarah Connolly and Simon Keenlyside...In all, a spectacularly successful reinvention of the British choral tradition.” The Observer, 23rd September 2012

“Connolly sings with mellifluous tone and Simon Keenlyside is an Elijah of spirit and intelligence: he may not have the sheer weight of a Bryn Terfel, but he's alive to every shift of meaning and his diction is, as ever, impeccable. The gut strings, unimpeded by vibrato, bring splendid urgency to the texture” BBC Music Magazine, November 2012 ****

“Miraculously, McCreesh succeeds in relating Elijah’s sound world to Mendelssohn’s more familiar, lighter-sounding works while never underplaying the performance’s staggering heft. The combined choirs produce a sonority which has to be heard to be believed. The doomy, dramatic numbers are simply terrifying...McCreesh’s Berlioz disc was a highlight of 2011; this Elijah is even better. Flawless, in other words.” The Arts Desk, 6th October 2012

“There’s a definite histrionic side to the role and Keenlyside doesn’t short-change us but when listening to him I was reminded again and again what a fine lieder singer he is...[Ward is] clear and accurate and shows excellent breath control. Furthermore, his pitching is spot-on...The orchestral playing is superb...This is a marvellous recording of Elijah...Anyone who cares about this fine work should try to hear it.” MusicWeb International, October 2012

“unashamedly committed and thoroughly dramatic…this a reading to make one hear Mendelssohn’s masterpiece anew…The recording is beautifully presented in an exquisitely designed ‘book format’” Choir & Organ, November/December 2012

“The sound is massive when required, but the articulation is never unwieldy and there is delicacy too … [the organ is] a splendid beast and, except in one instance, you would never know that it was dubbed on electronically...Sarah Connolly and Rosemary Joshua are both excellent. From the crib of ‘Death and the Maiden’ at the opening to the final ‘Amen’, this is a triumph.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2012

“Sarah Connolly, with her glowing, supple mezzo and unaffected directness, is well-nigh ideal” Daily Telegraph

“there is the superlative singing of Dietrich Henschel, who seems to go from strength to strength in Lieder.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2006

“Here is England's first great opera presented with a truly cohesive sense of theatrical purpose… Sarah Connolly is the driving force from the start… a supremely wide-ranging, tragic and experienced queen… inhabiting the shadows of "Ah! Belinda" with early signs of deplorable fate... the Lament... Connolly lives it with exactly the right blend of pre-conceived nobility and gut-wrenching sadness, simply confirming it as one of the musical high-points of the 17th century.” Gramophone Magazine, February 2009

“This new Dido… enshrines Connolly as one of the most affecting Carthaginian Queens since Janet Baker's account nearly half a century ago. From the outset, Connolly exudes imposing presence, pathos and unassailable dignity; her Act III Lament consummates a deeply-felt empathy with the role (honed not just in Purcell but also mindful of Berlioz's portrait in The Trojans). Gerald Finley's aristocratic Aeneas and Patricia Bardon's gimmick-free yet blood-chilling Sorceress are particularly impressive - though Bardon's sorority of witches sounds more house-trained than maliciously feral, while the playing of the OAE for co-directors Elizabeth Kenny and Stephen Devine is ever-alert and full of flair.” BBC Music Magazine, February 2009 ****

“The great singing comes from Patricia Bardon's lethal Sorceress and Gerald Finley's sincere, subtly anguished Aeneas. The playing, from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, co-directed by harpsichordist Steven Devine and guitarist Elizabeth Kenny, is exquisite.” The Guardian, 13th February 2009 ***

“A passionate and charismatic venture, the brainchild of Sarah Connolly, the Dido on this disc. Gerald Finley is stunning as a brave and silken-voiced Aeneas, and the continuo powerhouse of Kenny and Devine is awesome.” BBC Music Magazine, June 2009

“Lucy Crowe's Belinda is a splendid foil for Connolly's self-absorption, with her astute and increasingly desperate buoying up. The Sorceress of Patricia Bardon oozes class with an implacable display of vocal authority over cheap cliché, joined by two witches who gossip like a couple of housewives in the launderette. And then there's that single-tracked Aeneas, whom Purcell gives nothing of great moment. Gerald Finley parades the conventional Trojan Prince with generic regret and a smattering of hubris.
The textural lightness of the OAE, for whom a certain emotional reserve ultimately appears all the more powerful, is another feature of this excellent recording, as is the outstandingly deft co-direction of Elizabeth Kenny and Steven Devine.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Sarah Connolly as Dido is magnificent; from her opening ''Ah, Belinda'', she presents a queen emotionally removed from her surroundings, a subdued loner, predicting disaster even amidst present happiness...This truly feels like the 'Dido' for the 21st century.” Charlotte Gardner, bbc.co.uk, 28th January 2009

“[Connolly's] Queen is not merely stately and regal...is surprisingly real, utterly human, vulnerable and devastated by her perceived rejection...Finley is an ideal Aeneas...making more of his character than one usually encounters, with virility underscoring his interpretation...It is the disc of the year and should be chosen over its eminent predecessors, if only for Connolly’s majestic, yet all too human Dido.” Opera Britannia, 23rd August 2011 ****

“Connolly's characterization is deeply moving, with fine tonal contrasts in Dido's Lament. Gerald Finley too makes the most of the limited role of Aeneas with highly expressive singing...First-rate recording, finely balanced to an apt scale.” Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

“ The Music Makers is one of Elgar's most poignant and troubled utterances which movingly incorporates material from some of his greatest compositions, and it can hold its head high. Simon Wright steers a commendably clear-sighted course and coaxes an idiomatic response from his Bournemouth forces. Sarah Connolly proves scarcely less raptly responsive than Baker (for Boult), singing with glorious radiance, security and richness of tone; her delivery of the final line ('And a singer who sings no more') is deeply affecting.
Connolly also steps up to the mark in the SeaPictures (which follows after too short a gap). Hers is a gripping, intelligent display, combining keen poetic and dramatic instinct with clarity of diction, all technical challenges effortlessly surmounted.
A performance to hear alongside the classic Baker recording” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“The two singers have here superb voices, and Philip Herreweghe's accompaniments leave almost nothing to be desired…” BBC Music Magazine, September 2006 ****

“Sarah Connolly, with her glowing, supple mezzo and unaffected directness, is well-nigh ideal” Daily Telegraph

“…Herreweghe's keenly judged tempi and delicate, chamber-like way with the orchestral part… allows us, in a well ventilated recording, to hear every detail of the magical score finely played by the conductor's own orchestra. …Dietrich Henschel… brings to the dramatic songs a lively feeling for the texts and a vocal brio that places him among the most convincing male advocates in this work. ...Henschel's partner is the admirably alert and warm-toned Sarah Connolly.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2006

“Sarah Connolly sings Bridge's orchestral songs beautifully” BBC Music Magazine, Proms Issue 2005

“No fewer than 10 first recordings adorn this, the last instalment in Hickox's valuable Bridge series. Philip Langridge is in ardent voice for the first five tracks, the fourth of which, Love wenta-riding, remains the composer's best-known song. It sounds exhilaratingly new-minted in its sumptuous orchestral garb and is framed here by two companion settings of words by Mary Coleridge, Where she lies asleep and Thy hand in mine.
Particularly striking is the big-scale treatment afforded to Rupert Brooke's Blow out, you bugles, written in 1918 for the tenor Gervase Elwes and whose incorporation of the Last Post movingly anticipates Bridge's own towering Oration for cello and orchestra of a dozen years later.
Sarah Connolly is wonderfully eloquent in the haunting and often inspired 1922-24 Tagore diptych for mezzo and orchestra and also excels in the very early Berceuse (a remarkably assured setting of Dorothy Wordsworth from 1901) and affecting Mantle of blue (1918, and orchestrated 16 years later, to words by the Irish poet Padraic Colum). The programme concludes with five purely instrumental items, the most extended of which is the 1911 suite for wind band, The Pageantof London. Expertly fashioned, it makes for a diverting enough quarter of an hour (the 'Pavane' in the middle movement was destined to reappear 15 years later in Warlock's Capriol Suite). The tuneful Serenade exudes plenty of sepia-tinted charm, as does the wistful little Berceuse (1901).
Throw in some spick and span orchestral playing from the BBC NOW and Chandos's commendably natural engineering, not to mention Paul Hindmarsh's scholarly notes, and you have a job well done.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010