Mozart: Idomeneo - Act 3: La Chaconne, Qui Reprend
Mozart: Idomeneo - Act 3: Pas Seul
Mozart: Idomeneo - Act 3: Ha Vinto Amore
14th June 2009
“Mozart's first great opera has fared well on disc...there are penetrating things here, especially the seriousness with which the recitative is treated, and the interaction of Richard Croft's Idomeneo and Bernarda Fink's ideal Idamante - the great quartet is moving.”
1st June 2009
****
“The performance has great dramatic vitality throughout, and the sublime Gluckian drama of the third act has seldom sounded more urgent or moving. The playing of the Freiburg Barockorchester is beyond praise, as is”
22nd May 2009
***
“The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra plays wonderfully, and much of the singing is first rate, especially Richard Croft's authoritative Idomeneo, Bernarda Fink's honey-toned Idamante (Jacobs rightly favours the original 1781 version of the score with a mezzo rather than a tenor in that role), and Alexandrina Pendatchanska's haughty Elettra.”
22nd May 2009
****
“Idomeneo is the American tenor Richard Croft, wading through the moral quagmire with impressively crisp decorative runs.... In the role of the Trojan princess Ilia, Sunhae Im wields a small voice, but she uses it with point and feeling. As for Alexandrina Pendatchanska, if we could tap the rage of her Elettra there’d be no need for nuclear power stations.”
17th May 2009
***
“The orchestral playing, choral singing and most of the soloists are first-rate: Bernarda Fink’s ardent Idamante, Alexandrina Pendatchanska’s spitfire Elettra and Richard Croft’s noble Idomeneo rank with the best on disc.”
July 2009
****
“Jacob's strongest players are the superb Idamante of Bernarda Fink: tender, ardent and in touch with every nerve-ending of every beautifully shaped phrase. Alexandrina Pendatchanska, from her blazing top register to the dark depths of her voice, is a thrilling Elettra.”
August 2009
“…there is no denying the intense theatrical charge of Jacobs's performance. He chooses mobile, natural-sounding tempi… The chorus… are as involved and incisive as Gardiner's Monteverdi Choir in the glorious music Mozart allots them, while the superb Freiburg Baroque Orchestra relish what David Cairns dubs the opera's "proto-Romantic exploitation of orchestral colour". Jacobs, like Gardiner and Mackerras, is unerringly responsive to the ways Mozart expresses the drama through harmony, rhythm and orchestral texture. ...the role of the tortured king is tricky to cast. Richard Croft is a subtle, sensitive artist, mellifluous of tone, refined of phrase. In plangent beauty of tone and passionate immediacy, Bernarda Fink's Idamante is at least the equal of Anne Sofie von Otter (Gardiner) and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (Mackerras)... this new version, beautifully recorded, at its best eclipses all corners in dramatic tension, not least in the magnificent, anguished account of the great Act 3 quartet.”
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Mozart: Idomeneo - Overture
