DVD Videos

“[Sallinen] managed to get around the miasma of avant-garde cliches that followed worldwide disenchantment with the Second Viennese School without ending up in the ice-cream churn of neo-Romanticism. Not that his music hasn’t been neo-Romantic in recent years, but Sallinen has his own personality and style – a Finnish George Rochberg one might say – both elfin and somber. … The clash of disparate blocks of sound can last whole movements, but underneath flows a Stygian stream of implied disenchantment with the dark side of mankind, and a barely suppressed violence that suddenly erupts like a geyser.” Classical CD Review

“The Met brought out its best available performers. . . James Levine. . . controls the music superbly and. . . brings out a texture of sound in which Wagnerian sensualists can simply wallow.” Washington Post

“Levine's version of Luisa Miller consistently demonstrates his Verdian mastery, and not just in the best-known masterpieces...Not only in Levine's conducting but also in the sets and costumes of Nathanial Merrill's production the attractive rustic element of the piece is effectively brought out.” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ****

"A bold gamble and an exemplary success.... An interpretation that is intelligent, superlatively musical and unfailingly sensitive." Le Monde

“Gergiev conducts a sweeping performance, with a typically superb cast of the Kirov's revival years, full of rising stars - Diadkova, Ognovenko, Bezzubenkov and the superb character tenor Gassiev. Charming also is the staging, reproduced from airy, painterly 1920s sets. Museum opera, maybe; but then museums are there to preserve treasures. And this is an absolute gem.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2006 *****

“Hampson… sings well as Werther and makes a strong visual impression. He is sympathetically partnered by Susan Graham, whose singing of the "larmes" in Act 3 is deeply moving.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards 2006

‘These motets contain gorgeous music: they are to some degree concert music as much as religious music, and indeed the version of In Convertendo that has survived is the revised one for the Concert Spirituel. Lengthy orchestral parts, ravishing solos accompanied by flutes, occasional interludes with oboes and bassoons, make a lot of the music lyrical, if not elegiac.’ www.medieval.org

“The tendency to divide top honours in the high Baroque between Bach and Handel seems most unfair when Rameau is on the menu. What an astonishing musical imagination! The performance of the early, breathtakingly inventive motet, In convertendo, is mostly excellent... The documentary on Rameau has much charm and offers some sound historical insights.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2006 ****

“As the Governess, Eilene Hannan performed grippingly…The final scene, going from high drama to poignant grief, was arrestingly good” The Australian

“Nobody today, not even Goodall, can match Knappertsbusch’s combination of line and emotional power” Gramophone Magazine