Schubert: Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, second version, D583 (Schiller)

“A delightful recital … Neven’s melodies are every bit as persuasive as his lieder … the recording team does the project proud.” Classical Music, 17th November 2012

“Rarely do you hear, even in the rarefied world of French melodie and German Lieder, a baritone who sings with such subtlety in shading of dynamic and tone as the Dutch baritone Henk Neven...and this latest disc extends my admiration even further in totally exquisite singing...Altogether a most memorable song record.” Gramophone Magazine, February 2013

“In this studio account of Schubert's final song collection...there is still an enormous amount to admire - in the way that Henschel colours every line individually and, unlike some celebrated lieder baritones of today, never applies a uniform expressivity to everything he sings, and in the fine-grained expressive nuances with which he weights the meaning and significance of every word.” The Guardian, 31st July 2009 ***

“[Henschel's] voice is as flexible as ever, rich and commanding one moment and drained of all colour the next. Henschel and Schwinghammer convince us that this is no mere random selection of songs gathered after Schubert's death, as some believe, but a dramatic narrative that demands our attention.” The Observer, 26th July 2009

“Dietrich Henschel studied with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the latter’s stamp is clearly imprinted on his singing of Schubert’s last song-cycle. Henschel is never less than elegant, virile and intelligent.” The Telegraph, 11th August 2009 ***

“You couldn’t call Henschel’s bass-baritone voice suave, but his reedy tone can be very expressive when applied to songs of anguish. There are plenty of those in Schubert’s posthumous lieder collection.” The Times, 1st August 2009 ***

“John Eliot Gardiner and the ORR continue their Brahms symphonies series with this live recording of No 2, with the heartfelt Alto Rhapsody (soloist Nathalie Stutzmann) and three Schubert choruses as a bonus. Energy and meticulous phrasing truly ignite this score. Strings use limited vibrato, with judicious portamento and expressively varied bowing.” The Observer, 8th February 2009

“John Eliot Gardiner's Brahms cycle, performed across two seasons in several venues, was at pains to place the four symphonies, the German Requiem and the Alto Rhapsody in the context of music that Brahms is known to have admired, and which influenced his own works. For the disc of the Rhapsody and the Second Symphony, recorded in the Salle Pleyel, Paris, in November 2007, that context is provided by three of Schubert's male-voice choruses. Two of them are sung by the Monteverdi Choir in Brahms's own arrangements, while the most substantial, the Gesang der Geister über den Wassern, seems a direct antecedent of the writing for male voices in the Alto Rhapsody, which Natalie Stutzmann sings with gravity. The account of the symphony is impressive too - the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique sounds on more secure form than it was for the London leg of this tour - and Gardiner's swift reading is always dramatically sure footed.” The Guardian, 6th February 2009

“Gardiner's speeds are so relaxed that the music almost falls over. Still, they emphasise the melancholic strain in a work easily pigeonholed as a lyrical effusion. You can also enjoy the wide colour palette of the period instruments of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Nathalie Stutzmann's expressive way with the Alto Rhapsody is a delight; and the Schubert items for male chorus make interesting companions.” The Times, 14th February 2009 ***

“[The 1st movement's opening horn theme is] played on natural horn, already outmoded by Brahms’s time...the phrase is lightly broken, in the baroque fashion. Such well-defined colours and detailed attention to articulation collide with the idea of this work as predominantly warm, relaxed and lyrical, and Gardiner sometimes scrubs perhaps a little too vigorously on the patina of inherited performance traditions. Still, he certainly provokes fresh thinking.” Sunday Times, 1st March 2009 ***

“In the Second Symphony the period strings' lighter articulation gives Brahms's rhythms a sprightlier feel than in many modern sessions. …in Gesand der Geister Gardiner avoids any awkward episodic feeling by making the music tell the story of Goethe's poem fluently and with character.” BBC Music Magazine, April 2009 ****

“Gardiner quotes Walter Frisch's report that Brahms "disliked metronomic rigidity and lack of inflection on the one hand, fussy over- determined expressivity on the other". In the first movement, he and his period instrumentalists strike exactly that balance. This is characterful music-making, complex and subtle.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2009

“Orchestre Romantique et Révolutionnaire's sound is vivid and clear. Nathalie Stutzmann's "Alto Rhapsody" is tenderly shaped, depthless, elegant…this is an arresting and impressive performance.” The Independent on Sunday

“Last year I made the CD of the First Symphony one of my Recordings of the Year. This latest instalment will be on the shortlist for 2009, I feel sure – unless SDG trump this particular ace by releasing Symphony 3 before the year end. One can live in hope.” MusicWeb International

“Critics have sung Mr. Goerne's praises over and over, and one can hardly add anything at this point: The voice is one of the most beautiful - most lush, most creamy - that any of us has ever heard. His singing is almost impossibly smooth. The first time you hear it, you can scarcely believe it. Even the 10th time, you have to wonder… An impressive recital. Matthias Goerne: a first-class and unforgettable lieder singer.” The New York Sun

“In the sombre and elegiac songs that dominate his programme, Goerne is in his element, singing with his distinctive dark, rounded beauty and almost tortured intensity of thought and feeling. More than almost any other Lieder singer today, he combines expressive diction with an unblemished legato... In their mingled majesty and aching tenderness, Goerne's performances of two great Mayrhofer settings...are as moving as any performances I can remember. With his deep mahogany tones and innate seriousness of manner (on the concert platform he habitually wears a haunted air), Goerne is less convincing when a certain lightness of touch is needed. While not many of his chosen songs require him to smile, one that surely does is the wistful barcarolle Des Fischers Liebesglück, whose fisherman in question sounds thoroughly depressed. It is the same in Der Jüngling am Bache, where Goerne's slow, doleful performance suggests hopeless resignation rather than the tremulous expectancy implied by poem and music.” The Telegraph, 28th April 2008

“Goerne's renowned breath control … creates the hushed legato which is his hallmarl. This comes into its own in the Mayrhofer and Leitner settings, creating the mesmeric lilt of water and of light.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2008 ****

“His voice has a melting allure that draws you in completely to the sentiments of the song, and the disarming beauty of Schubert's music. These performances glow in various lights, rounding off a truly excellent first volume of an ongoing Schubert series.” The Scotsman

“Following Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau nearly 40 years on, Goerne is in his element, singing with his distinctive dark, rounded beauty and almost tortured intensity of thought and feeling. More than almost any other Lieder singer today, he combines expressive diction with an unblemished legato, "bowing" Schubert's long lines like a master cellist (shades here of the great Hans Hotter). In their mingled majesty and aching tenderness, Goerne's performances of two great Mayrhofer settings, Memon and Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren, are as moving as any performances I can remember.” The Telegraph, 26 April 2008 Classical CD of the Week

“Matthias Goerne is fast becoming the Fischer-Dieskau of his generation, the standard-setting singer of the central lieder repertoire.” International Record Review

“'Do you know of any happy music?' Schubert once asked a friend. 'I don't.' Those words could stand as an epigraph to Matthias Goerne's opening salvo in a projected 11- or 12-disc survey of Schubert Lieder. Evanescence, elegy and yearning for a transcendent otherness are the keynotes of a programme that encompasses the Attic majesty and terribilità of 'Memnon' and 'Gruppe aus dem Tartarus', the disillusioned fatalism of 'Der Pilgrim' and the philosophical grandeur of 'Grenzen der Menschenheit'. In these songs Goerne, with his distinctive dark, velvet timbre, is in his element. An intense, almost tortured concentration of thought and feeling has always been his hallmark, as has an unblemished legato. The way he bows Schubert's long lines like a cellist is reminiscent of the great Hans Hotter.
Goerne's rich bass resonances are heard to advantage in a performance of 'Grenzen der Menschenheit' that embraces aching tenderness as well as deep, rolling gravitas. 'Memnon' – a typical Mayrhofer allegory of the artist as tragic outsider – is equally spellbinding, illuminated by telling details like the lingering portamento on 'liebend' – 'lovingly' – as dawn's rays break through the mists. And when have the hazardous leaps of another allegorical Mayrhofer song, 'Freiwilliges Versinken been negotiated with such smoothness and hypnotic eloquence.
Where doubts creep in is in the handful of songs where, pace Schubert's own words, a certain lightness of tone and spirit is implied, but Goerne's involvement is so palpable and his style so scrupulous. For two-thirds and more of this recital the interpretative rewards are uncommonly rich, with the baritone well complemented by Elisabeth Leonskaja's deep-toned (if on occasion over-pedalled), often orchestrally conceived accompaniments.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

'The readings, with Johnson's piano at its probing best, are constantly enlightening and carry the absorbed listener into a rarefied world of word and music. The disc lasts an incredible 80 minutes, but the time flies by in such perceptive company' (Gramophone)

“Terfel's gift […] is a generous, individual voice, a natural feeling for German and an inborn ability to go to the heart.” Gramophone Magazine

“one of his first recordings to confirm his exceptional gift of projecting his magnetic personality with keen intensity...[he] is daring in confronting you face to face, very much as the young Fischer-Dieskau did, using the widest range of dynamics and tone.” Penguin Guide, 2010 edition ***