Brahms: Nachtwandler, Op. 86 No. 3

“Heise has an attractive voice and sings with appealing candour. Roger Vignoles is an attentive, vastly experienced accompanist. Yet it is hard to suppress the feeling that this debut recital is premature...In both [Danish] songs she sings with a confidence and a mezzo glow in the tone that can seem inhibited in the familiar German songs...As yet her characterisation is cautious, generalised, with no illumination of individual words and phrases.” Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2012

“This selection keeps springing pleasant surprises. Kirchschlager’s articulation can be veiled, but she always sings with feeling, and Graham Johnson expertly judges the quirky piano accompaniments. His notes, as usual, are awesomely detailed.” The Times, 29th May 2010 ****

“Kirchschlager’s charm shines through in the lighter, more folkish songs of Op 48 and more high-spirited inspirations such as the enchanting O komme, holde Sommernacht and Bei dir sind meine Gedanken.” The Telegraph, 13th June 2010 **

“Graham Johnson, once again, is both mastermind and pianist, and, as ever, his accompanying notes and essays are as witty and richly allusive as his playing...This recital is beautifully shaped.” BBC Music Magazine, July 2010 ****

“Angelika Kirchschlager sings with purity of tone, evenly produced and unfailingly accurate in intonation...Graham Johnson's notes...complementary to his playing, are enlightening as ever and in a way which only he knows how to be.” Gramophone Magazine, August 2010

“Johnson's arrangement of this recital and his exceptional accompanying skills, together with Kirchschlager's voice and approach, almost always so appropriate to Brahms, make this a highly desirable disc.” International Record Review, July/August 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 *****

“Listening to these Brahms songs culled from BBC broadcasts one realises just why Dame Janet's reputation continues to remain so high and why so many of her successors don't quite match her standards. To every song here, familiar or unfamiliar, she brings her special ability of making it her own and reaching to its heart. It's an almost uncanny gift, and not one easy to explain, but it makes every song in this programme momentous. Wondrous is the sustained half-voice with which she invests Nachtwandler with its intimate, sad feeling.
Then there's the outpouring of joy that is Meine Liebe ist grün to which she brings the most lustrous tone and an outgoing manner, and finally the gentle sense of fun, never overdone, which she brings to the very familiar VergeblichesStändchen.
If Brahms had written no other songs than Feldeinsamkeit, Der Tod, das ist die kühle Nacht and Von ewiger Liebe, he would surely be hailed as a great Lieder composer. Baker obviously understands their astonishing high quality. The first is sung, as it should be, with a kind of inner wonder, each amazing line given its full due. In the second, a Liebestod avant la lettre, she sings with the proper impassioned feeling, while the last, a happier statement of eternal love, is sung with the rugged conviction that always showed the singer at her very best.
Lush and Hamburger, especially the latter, are fully cognisant of what to do with Brahms's intricate writing for the piano. The sound is admirable, catching early Baker in full flow.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“This is an important disc and one that will give great pleasure since it contains so much fine and deeply committed singing. It’s certainly a mandatory purchase for all admirers of Brahms’s lieder or of Dame Janet Baker.” MusicWeb International

“what singing: what a voice, what beauty of line, variety of colour, incisive diction and unforced mastery of the whole difficult art of Lieder…the disc is a feast.” The Times

“a hugely impressive disc, testifying to the versatility and range of a singer who has already drawn comparisons with Janet Baker” The Guardian

“A national treasure” Evening Standard

“Connolly's lovely singing reaches to the sensuous core” The Telegraph

“Almost seven years ago we went to the Wigmore Hall expecting to hear a well known soprano only to find that she had been replaced by a less well-known mezzo. Sarah Connolly had already appeared with the English National Opera in major roles such as Handel's Xerxes and Donizetti's Mary Stuart. Disappointment at missing the scheduled artist vanished with the completion of the substitute's first phrases. Delight took its place and increased steadily throughout the recital. It was a clear, fresh and powerful voice, used with intelligent assurance, and by the final groups (Duparc and Falla) she had established with the audience the rapport of a much more experienced artist. What was true at the Wigmore holds for this concert at St John's, Smith Square, where her success with the audience is again unmistakable and fully merited.
Again, her choice of programme contributes to the success: a judicious mixture of the familiar and out-of-the-way, and well suited to voice and style. The Brahms group is particularly satisfying, with Die Mainacht broadly phrased, Nachtwandler imaginatively hushed and Von ewigerLiebe warmly felt. The Hahn songs are equally (if contrastingly) delightful, the two pastiche pieces, A Chloris and Quand je fus pris au pavillon charmingly in period. Weill's Speak Low and Ireland's Her Song are winning encore pieces.
That leaves Haydn's Arianna a Naxos, the long and demanding concert aria which opens the programme. Here we find a substantial achievement and a limitation. The style is admirably clean and the emotional range well probed, but the whole remains a little impersonal and one is driven to comparisons. Janet Baker brings warmer humanity and a more memorable timbre while Cecilia Bartoli is more vivid – hear her intense 'Tradita io sono' for instance, or the pale 'Già più non reggo' or the furious final 'Barbaro ed infedel'.
That comparison does, however, throw into a very favourable light Eugene Asti's accompaniment: where András Schiff (for Bartoli) is over– assertive, Asti is sensitive and keeps proportion.
And indeed he does so throughout: a constant pleasure and a major contribution to the recital's undoubted success.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Connolly woos her audience with the calling-card for any and every mezzo: Haydn's dramatic cantata, Arianna a Naxos. And every second of its nervous and emotional life - its hopes, fears and final despair - are uncovered in Connolly's superbly observant voice and imagination.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2006 *****

“…a clear, fresh and powerful voice, used with intelligent assurance… The Brahms group is particularly satisfying, with Die Mainacht broadly phrased, Nachtwandler imaginatively hushed and Von ewiger Liebe warmly felt. The Hahn songs are equally… delightful, the two pastiche pieces, A Chloris and Quand je fus pris au pavillon charmingly in period. ...Weill's Speak Low and Ireland's Her Song are winning encore pieces.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2006