Brahms: Nachtigall, Op. 97 No. 1

“carefully remastered and sounding remarkably real and vivid...her range of expression runs the whole gamut...A performance that should be in every collection.” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ***

“Frauenliebe Baker's 'heroine' is knowing, so that the early rapture seems tainted by hindsight. But the voice is sovereign; awesome in its control, majestic in its command.” BBC Music Magazine, January 2006 ****

“A lovely collection: if you had to choose a single disc to represent Seefried in song you could not do better than this...Her personal warmth permeates the voice, and in these recordings one feels it as when she herself was part of our regular musical life half a century ago.” Gramophone Magazine, April 2010

“Throughout, the baritone combines a detailed approach with an overview, demonstrating an exceptional ability to seek out the meaning of both text and music, holding them together in one single image. …a great Lieder singer at the peak of his powers. He is well served by his accompanist, who deploys a huge range of tone and colour with an equally firm artistic intent.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2009 *****

“From Roger Vignoles's first light-filled notes in 'Bei mir sind meine Gedanken', with Bernada Fink's smiling, wide-eyed voice, these performers make it sound as though the ink is still wet on Brahms's manuscripts. The real skill of Fink and Vignoles is to capture that fusion of physical and emotional movement within a song - and to recreate it with real spontaneity.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2007 ****

“'Bei dir sind meine Gedanken', one of Brahms's happiest songs, makes an inviting aperitif. Buoyed by the evanescent shimmer of Roger Vignoles's accompaniment, Bernarda Fink is all confiding eagerness, phrasing deftly and gracefully and showing a natural feeling for Brahmsian rubato. One would expect Fink's warm, luminous mezzo, flecked by darker, deeper tints, to be near ideal for, say, the nostalgia of 'Alte Liebe' or the many songs of elegiac loss and heartbreak, all touchingly done here. But having thought of her as an essentially 'serious' singer, dignified, eloquent, the vivacity and 'face' she brings to 'Bei dir sind meine Gedanken' and other lighter songs is sheer delight. 'Ständchen', here more sunlit than moonlit, is charmingly characterised, with an affectionate caress on the dreaming girl's 'Vergiss nicht mein'. Fink is playfully coquettish without archness in the delicious 'Spanisches Lied', and sings 'Vergebliches Ständchen' with an outgoing boldness and witty touches of timing – and the tender lingering on the penultimate 'Mein Knab' suggests that the boy's luck may soon be about to change.
Other singers have brought a more intense yearning to 'Die Mainacht' and found greater mystery amid the slumberous balm of 'Feldeinsamkeit'.
But Fink's flowing performances, sensitively shaped and inflected, are never less than satisfying. It is good to be reminded, too, that, for all its melancholy, 'Die Mainacht' is also a song of spring, suffused by warm major-key harmonies, with a hint of excited anticipation at the line 'Wann, o lächelndes Bild'. On the face of it, Fink's lyric mezzo would seem to be on the light side for 'Von ewiger Liebe'. But with Vignoles imaginatively 'orchestrating' the keyboard part, she gives a finely graded, deeply moving performance, vividly contrasting the contained passion of the boy's words with the girl's gentle candour. The glowing climactic avowal of eternal love is truly overwhelming, setting the seal on a Brahms recital of rare distinction.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“For all the tragic, premature loss last year of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Argentinian Bernarda Fink is just one of a golden generation of mezzos vying for the mantle of Janet Baker. One of the most versatile, as at ease in Baroque repertoire as in music from Handel and Mozart to Schumann, Fink's rich, warm voice boasts the perfect blend of colour and clarity for this selection of 31 songs from the almost 200 Brahms wrote. Her musical intelligence combines with the sensitivity of Roger Vignoles to capture the folk-song spirit behind their urbane polish.” The Observer

“When Victoria de los Angeles appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in 1957, she was in her prime, the voice as supple and sensitive as it was beautiful. Everything she tackled seemed to be touched by the magic of her attractive presence and glorious singing.
Good as her account of Schumann's Widmung may be, it's when she gets to Brahms, perhaps her favourite composer in this genre, that she's wholly at home, the wistful sense of pain in Nachtigall caught to perfection. In the wordless pieces by Stravinsky and Ravel she floats that warm yet ethereal tone of hers with consummate ease, and the long–breathed phrasing and excellent French in Duparc's mélodie are enhanced by this artist's innate skill in word–painting. For all that, audiences were always impatient for her to get to the Spanish part of her programme, for in this field she was unsurpassed as a singer and interpreter.
Many of these songs were also recorded by her in the studio, but the live occasion gives these performances an extra frisson. The encores are even better. An account of Clavelitos is a superior reading even to those famous ones available elsewhere.
That's complemented by a delightfully insouciant account of the Delibes song that she didn't attempt on any other recorded occasion.
Gerald Moore, as was his wont, manages to change idioms with his familiar virtuosity. As a whole, this is an invaluable addition to the singer's extensive discography.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Donna Brown is an ideal singer, a feverish and smooth performer, true and poetic” Le Quotidien de Paris