Granados: Tonadillas: No. 8, El mirar de la maja

“A remarkable achievement: a fan letter to Spanish music (not excluding South America or an excursion to Villa-Lobos's Brazil) including a new commission from Nicolas Bacri. It's carried out with aplomb...Petibon is especially effective in the zarzuela numbers...Throughout, Petibon's acting and character skills evidently lift each interpretation...Hugely recommended.” Gramophone Magazine, January 2012

“a more apt title is would be hard to imagine...This is in every respect a superlative disc and demonstrates yet again that in Patricia Petibon we have a singer with a real gift for vivid and colourful performances supported by an impeccable technique and real all-round artistry. This is not the best thing she has ever done, simply because just about everything she does is exceptional.” International Record Review, January 2012

“There's a pleasingly rich core to Petibon's voice besides the coloratura heights she's renowned for. She performs with total commitment and without fear and this injects everything she sings with tremendous character.” Classic FM Magazine, February 2012 ****

“The Bridge CD is a live performance from the 2004 Caramoor Festival. Its star, without a doubt, is the great mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died less than two years later. ...Hunt Lieberson is utterly memorable.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2008 ****

“Lieberson's continually finding that extra gear of emotion that makes a song a three-dimensional staging rather than a platform recital. Her partner, is the fresh, versatile tenor of Joseph Kaiser… Tight, well works accompaniments… complete a little gem of an issue.” Gramophone Magazine, March 2008

“Recorded near the start of her career, the Spanish soprano here sings art songs and folk songs in her own language, with impeccable technique, style and expressive power. Her piano accompanist is the marvellous Gerald Moore.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2008 *****

“It looks like a standard song recital, yet it's played on the viola. …the opening excerpt from Falla's Seven Popular Songs… turns up later in its usual context to hypnotic effect: slower than would be singable, and so contemplative that it sounds like Arvo Pärt. The sense of concentration, with minute inflections of line and timbre in which the pianist is caught up too, continues into the ensuing Granados set.” BBC Music Magazine, December 2007 *****

“The performances deceive the ear into thinking these idiomatic arrangements are instrumental originals.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2007

“The two Respighi songs are magical performances – Stornellatrice, with the golden voice at its richest and E se un giorno tornasse, a study in subtle shading of tone, a dialogue between a mother and her dying, jilted daughter. For those two brief items alone, superbly transferred, this collection is an essential for all admirers of this singer, but there's much more. Handel's 'O had I Jubal's lyre' in German rather than English may be odd, but the performance sparkles and among the Lieder it's good to have not just 'Der Nussbaum' – the Schumann song which was always special to her – but two previously unpublished, 'Widmung' from the Myrthe songs and 'Ich grolle nicht' from Dichterliebe.
Through the whole collection the superb transfers capture the full–throated glory of los Angeles's voice at the beginning of her career.
The 1942 recordings of two Hungarian folk– songs, previously unpublished, may be rough and limited – made when the singer was only 18 – but they amply demonstrate that already the voice was fully developed in its beauty. No fewer than 18 of the 27 items are of Spanish songs, and though in one or two instances los Angeles was destined to make even more idiomatic readings later with a Spanish accompanist, these ones with Gerald Moore as her partner have a freshness and brilliance that has rarely been matched in this repertory. In particular it's good to have her first recording of the encore number which she made her own, Clavelitos.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010