Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice

“…Gli Angeli Genève have assembled five magnificent cantatas from contrasting 17th- and 18th-century North German lineages. Telemann's Funeral Cantata is perhaps the greatest surprise for its remarkably affecting text-setting, lightness of touch in its scoring and supreme attention to detail... Gli Angeli's... account reaches the heights in the concluding chorus (is this and the preceding soprano aria as Bachian as Telemann gets?) with that master of the oboe, Marcel Ponseele, as beguiling as ever.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“this excellent recording” The Observer

“fine performances” Financial Times

“…a very attractive programme…a well-disciplined and musicianly period instrument ensemble…I have much enjoyed this CD” International Record Review

“exquisitely performed” Classic FM Magazine

“[Finley] brings eloquence to the text and maturity to his interpretations, but with a still youthful-sounding voice. Darker and more “bassy” of tone than Dieskau, he is especially impressive in the sardonic and bitter songs...Finley is a gripping narrator, too, in the tale of Belshazzar’s feast, and can refine his voice to the most arresting of internalised confidences in the love songs to Clara Wieck.” Sunday Times, 14th September 2008 ****

“Finley is a much less knowing, more direct performer than Fischer-Dieskau, concentrating less on precise verbal nuance (though his German diction is wonderfully clear) than on more generalised expressive contours, but the effect is still overwhelmingly powerful.” Andrew Clements, The Guardian, 5th September 2008 *****

“Doubts as to whether the world needs yet another Dichterliebe are allayed by a performance that probes the extremes of Schumann's evocation of remembered, blighted love. Gerald Finley's burnished baritone is one of the most beautiful voices to have recorded the cycle.” The Telegraph, 6th September 2008

“Finley's performance gives huge pleasure and insight…” BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 ****

“In close collusion with the ever-sentient Julius Drake, Gerald Finley gives one of the most beautifully sung an intensely experience performances on dic of Schumann's cycle of rapture, disillusion and tender regret. This is a Dichterliebe firmly in the past tense, the poet-lover achingly resigned from the outset. Singer and pianist are just as compelling in the other Heine settings here.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“Isserlis's mobile, feeling but never gushing legato lines… Hough's winged, crystalline partnership.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2005

“[Finley] sings Schumann's great song-cycle with much tonal beauty and feeling, above all capturing the deep disillusion of Schumann's inspiration” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ****

“In close collusion with the ever-sentient Julius Drake, Gerald Finley gives one of the most beautifully sung and intensely experienced performances on disc of Schumann's cycle of rapture, disillusion and tender regret. This is a Dichterliebe firmly in the past tense, the poetlover achingly resigned from the outset. Finley sings the second song, 'Aus meinen Tränen', as if in a trance, and lingers luxuriantly, even masochistically, over the remembered 'Ich liebe dich' in 'Wenn ich' in deine Augen seh''. Yet here and elsewhere some dangerously slow tempi are vindicated by the acuity of his verbal and musical responses. Where most singers end 'Im Rhein' in wistful tenderness, Finley infuses his final words with a wry bitterness. The disenchantment of 'Ich grolle nicht' is already glimpsed. In the cycle's latter stages Finley veers between numb reverie and acerbic self-dramatisation.
The birds' assuaging response in 'Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen' is magical, barely breathed, the mounting trauma of the funereal dream-song 'Ich hab' im Traum geweinet' chillingly conveyed, the dissolving vision of the penultimate 'Aus alten Märchen' relived with ineffable sadness. Adding a cutting edge to his warm, mahogany baritone, Finley imbues the final song with savage irony, before the rueful, healing close. Throughout, Drake's playing is a model of clarity and acutely observed detail (he is more attentive than most to bass-lines), epitomised in his fluid, exquisitely voiced epilogue.
Singer and pianist are just as compelling in the other Heine settings here. The church acoustic is more resonant than is ideal for Lieder, though that hardly detracts from a glorious Schumann recital.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Grotesquerie, beauty, irony, sentimentality and overwhelming passion mingle to breathtaking effect...His in-the-moment honesty is matched note-for-note by pianist Julius Drake, who partners him with a superb sense of drama and detail. It's a recital which can stand comparison with the greatest Schumann recordings.” METRO

“This daunting and inspired coupling is played by Hamish Milne with an uplifting musical authority.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“Milne gives fiery, rhythmically taut readings of both big pieces, stressing their gaunt architecture while displaying admirable range of colour and touch which evokes the organ-like sonorities of the Liszt.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2008 ****

“This daunting and inspired coupling is played by Hamish Milne with an uplifting musical authority.
Indeed, aided by Hyperion's superb sound (rich and resonant throughout the entire register), you are made to realise that the Ad nos Fantasy – a massive tribute to Busoni as transcriber – is not only among his finest achievements but (as Milne suggests in his accompanying notes) transcends Liszt's original organ work and seemingly takes on a life of its own.
The central Adagio in particular has all of Liszt's obsessive and ecstatic wheeling round an idea yet is unmistakably stamped with Busoni's own intimidating power. And it is here in particular that Milne offers playing of the rarest refinement and sensitivity before launching the final fugue in a blaze of virtuosity.
Busoni's Fantasia contrappuntistica takes such music to a further extreme. Among the composer's most formidable works, its colossal range and scope tell you that Busoni's music can seem like a mighty mountain range glimpsed behind clouds. Again, Milne's performance is of an unfaltering beauty and lucidity. As an extra he sandwiches Busoni's transcription of the Andantino from Mozart's Jeunehomme Concerto between these two peaks, a rarity where Mozart's sublimity is coloured by Busoni's altogether more forbidding personality. Milne may playfully claim in his notes that he would 'like to play like Bill Evans and Ahmad Jamal and sing like Flagstad', but we should surely be mightily grateful for his own unmistakable personality.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Hamish Milne's performance [of the Fantasia Contrappuntistica] is wonderfully spacious. He completes his disc with equally convincing accounts of two of Busoni's homages to other composers high in his personal pantheon.” The Guardian, 26th September 2008 ***

“[Fleming's] voice is perfectly suited to [these 'magical late songs'] demands, less of range than of tender, expressive feeling…a must for more than merely Straussians” Anthony Holden, The Observer, 7th September 2008

“Renée Fleming's first recording of the Last Songs, made in 1996 (on RCA), was distinctly mixed. Here Christian Thielemann is a much more natural Straussian, powerful and luxuriant, and Fleming's voice has gained in distinctiveness and diction, to splendidly dramatic effect, often with a real 'float' at the top.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 ****

“As Fleming explains in a note, the Four Last Songs has become the work that she has performed most often. Throughout the four songs, Fleming not only lavishes every resource of tonal richness at her command, but she seems to be urging all sorts of extra details from the text. The sound is stupendous, Fleming's voice complemented by the Munich Orchestra, with Thielemann bringing out every detail in Strauss's nostalgic orchestration.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“[Thielemann] gives her voice space to soar and swoop in its illimitable fashion, but refuses to indulge her much-discussed habit of dropping consonants half the time...this is a strikingly fretful interpretation that contemplates mortality with profound unease as well as resignation...Elsewhere, she gives a ravishing account of Verführung and the finest performance of Winterweihe I can think of.” The Guardian, 10th October 2008 ****

“A wonderful performance, and listening to it… has been a most moving experience. The soloists are admirable… The choir is fine in blend, precisions and enunciation; the boys' choir too, ideal in its embodiment of unsanctimonious sanctity. For the chamber ensemble and full orchestra, only admiration... Above all, we must honour their conductor, whose mature guidance is everywhere in evidence.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“The orchestra sounds almost human in its emotional involvement, while the choral singing is of the highest order. Add the beautiful solo performances and it’s impossible to recommend this highly enough.” Classic FM Magazine, March 2009

“A wonderful performance and a most moving experience. Critically, one must keep the experience (subjective) as distant from the relatively objective facts of the performance as possible: on this occasion that wasn't very easy, or even desirable. Certainly all the elements in this complex organisation are well served. The soloists are admirable, Annette Dasch pure in tone, powerfully concentrated in style, James Taylor a tenor whose voice can respond to what is gentle and compassionate in his music as to the unsparing harshness, and Christian Gerhaher authoritative, humane and (like the others) entirely firm in his singing. The choir is fine in blend, precision and enunciation; the boys' choir, too, ideal in its embodiment of unsanctimonious sanctity. For the chamber ensemble and full orchestra, only admiration, as for the recording's producer and engineer who have dealt so well with the difficult task of keeping these elements distinct and unifying them at the same time. Above all, we must honour their conductor, whose mature guidance is everywhere in evidence.
It's the sense of unity that has distinguished this experience of the War Requiem most especially.
Rarely has it moved with such logic. That seems a strange word to use in the description of what was so deeply emotional, yet it's right. For the first time the work moved with the singleminded force of a geometrical theorem. Darkness and light, war and peace, noise and quiet are the unifying opposites throughout. The selection and sequence of Owen's poems are so wellfitting that the line – can you call it 'of argument'? – is unbroken and all goes forward to the almost painful easement of 'Let us sleep now'.
Do to try it for yourself.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Rilling is undoubtedly an efficient choir trainer - the Festivalensemble Stuttgart manages even the trickiest passages of Britten's choral writing with suave assurance” The Guardian, 24th October 2008 **

“The Shostakovich… is totally engrossing. …the Atriums sustain intensity throughout the epic structures of the first and third movements while managing to hold back sufficiently to make the ultimate climaxes all the more cataclysmic.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2008 *****

“The Atrium Quartet won first prize in the 2003 London International String Quartet Competition with a gripping account of Shostakovich's Fifth Quartet – along with the Twelfth, the most wide ranging and powerfully wrought of the cycle, though among the least performed.
On their disc, unfazed by its demands, the Atrium steer a propulsive course through the Allegro – easily the most persuasively argued of Shostakovich's sonata-form movements – and effect a suspenseful transition into the Andante, whose otherworldliness is underlined by the sparing but varied use of vibrato. Nor does the finale disappoint – its initial animation and violent culmination leading to a coda whose bittersweet oblivion is unerringly captured.
This is undoubtedly the finest recording of the Fifth Quartet to have appeared during recent years and if that of Beethoven's Harp Quartet is not of the same stature, then the smouldering pathos and visceral excitement that the Atrium draw from its slow movement and Scherzo respectively suggest that the Beethoven quartets are territory hardly less ripe for further exploration.
The Atrium's Shostakovich, however, is a performance to treasure. Decently recorded, too.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“This is undoubtedly the finest recording of the Fifth Quartet to have appeared during recent years and if that of Beethoven's Harp Quartet is not of the same stature, then the smouldering pathos and visceral excitement that the Atrium draw from its slow movement and Scherzo respectively suggest that the Beethoven quartets are... hardly less ripe for further exploration. The Strium's Shostakovich, however, is a performance to treasure.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“Saariaho has always had an extraordinary ear for a beauty of sound, best described in terms of light. …performances have that extra edge which live recording brings.” BBC Music Magazine, September 2008 ****

“These performances… are just about ideal as introductions to Saariaho… Anssi Karttunen and Karita Mattila… combine to magical effect in Mirage, where they jointly interpret the transformations of the woman in Mexican shaman-healer María Sabina's ecstatic text (set in English). ..Orion - inspired by the mortal and cosmic aspects of the mythological hunter - deserves to figure on any short list for orchestral masterpiece of the new millennium. Kaleidoscopic orchestral colour, remote from human gesture and drama but rich in intellectual imagination, is a dimension in which Christoph Eschenbach excels, and demonstration recording quality of the kind Ondine supplies is the other notable ingredient in this compelling programme.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“Light is the element that allies Kaija Saariaho to so many of her Nordic peers; that, plus related things such as fire, sky, eclipse and mirage, all of which feature as titles or subtitles in the three pieces recorded here. Musical textures that shimmer, scintillate, explode, darken and extinguish are her bridge between modernism and tradition, and potentially also the listener's path from familiar modes of listening into her fascinating, never vulgarly gratifying, realm of sonic imagination.
These performances from the '100” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“…this… is the first studio recording of the work, and Opera Rara has done it proud. David Parry leads the LPO in a gripping account of a tricky piece. Patrizia Ciofi is meltingly pathetic and then imperious when necessary. Dario Schmunck makes a virile and ardent Arturo, and in the crucial role of Valdeburgo... Mark Stone is suitably warrior-like. The contribution of the Geoffrey Mitchell Choir are splendid. A must for lover of the bel canto repertory.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“Opera Rara has fielded what is probably as good an ensemble of young singers as you are likely to be able to gather together for this early work; and David Parry coaxes some stylish playing from the London Philharmonic Orchestra…” BBC Music Magazine, February 2009 ****

“ La straniera was Bellini's fourth opera, first performed at La Scala in February 1829. During the composer's lifetime, and for a few years after his death in 1835, it enjoyed considerable international success, though contemporary reviewers were sometimes hostile, criticising its lack of set-piece arias and complaining of the 'continual interruptions' to the musical line. It is this that strikes the modern listener as one of the most interesting aspects of the score. Bellini was experimenting with something, if not exactly through-composed, then sacrificing vocal fireworks for the sake of the dramatic structure.
The libretto concerns the woes of the exiled Queen of France, Agnese, who is obliged to live incognito in Brittany as Alaide – 'The Stranger'.
She spends the whole opera refusing to tell anyone, including her beloved Arturo, who she really is. When he at last finds out – at his wedding to another woman – he stabs himself to death at the Queen's feet. It is a blood-andthunder piece of gothic melodrama, with the inevitable courtroom scene in which the heroine is wrongly accused.
Renata Scotto, Montserrat Caballé and Elena Souliotis have sung the work but this set is the first studio recording of the work, and Opera Rara has done it proud. David Parry leads the LPO in a gripping account of a tricky piece.
Patrizia Ciofi is meltingly pathetic and then imperious when necessary. Dario Schmunck makes a virile and ardent Arturo, and in the crucial role of Valdeburgo (also in disguise, he is Agnese's brother), Mark Stone is suitably warrior- like. In the rather ungrateful role of the 'other woman', Enkelejda Shkosa gets quite a jolly little rondo towards the end of Act 2. Among the other highlights are a catchy hunters' chorus and the trio in which the two men fight for the stranger's affection. The scene in Act 1, when they both end up in the lake apparently drowning, is a rousing finale. The contributions of the Geoffrey Mitchell Choir are splendid. A must for lovers of the bel canto repertory.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Bellini's decision to replace his usual flexible coloratura with something more altogether angular leads, however, to a score that his contemporaries considered radical...Made in tandem with Opera Rara's revival last November, the recording makes a strong case for the work” The Guardian, 10th October 2008 ***