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Performance ****      Recording *****

“… Thanks to Romanian musicians Cornel Taranu and Sabin Pautza who have reconstructed Strigoii and clothed it in suitably idiomatic instrumentation, as well as to the fine vocal and orchestral contributions on this recording, we can now appreciate a fascinating score whose most striking feature is the extensive declamatory speaking role for the narrator… Another intriguing discovery is the early unpublished Pastorale fantasie for small orchestra … an attractive and imaginative work, and it is played here with great warmth and sensitivity.”

“This is another attractive program with works by Walter Braunfels. Gregor Bühl and Tatjana Blome play with conviction and dramatic expressivity.” ****

"Ukrainian composer Zara Levina has written two really great piano concertos, which are now finally available in a modern recording of good quality. Both pianist Maria Lettberg and conductor Ariane Matiakh are truly committed to give very effective performances of this rewarding music." *****

 

“… Two of the soloists are Slovakian; the bass-baritone Adam Plachetka is Czech. The score is full of vivid colour and recurrent motifs, the highlight of which is the frightening nocturnal journey to impending doom, a riveting affair well conveyed in this well-paced and idiomatic-sounding recording. Meister respects the importance of the wind writing in this score, balancing it well against the strings. Simona Šaturová is good, her early reminiscence of her lover being warmly and longingly textured even if she is very slightly shrill at the top of her range. Her prayer scene is particularly well done.  Adam Plachetka’s youthful, pliant bass is attractive…”

“It was high time for a new recording of Dvorak’s cantata The Spectre’s Bride. Fortunately, the performance is very good, with Cornelius Meister giving the music a lot of passion and drama without neglecting the more lyrical side. Soloists, choir and orchestra respond persuasively to Meister’s conducting.”  *****

“Simona Šaturová is pure and innocent as the girl but thrills when she throttles up. Pavol Breslik is smooth and eager as her ghostly spouse, Adam Plachetka sage-like as the narrator. A nice little discovery… “

“… Simona Šaturová’s use of language is the chief distinction of her work: you hear in her inflections both the girl’s naïveté and her capacity for love. Pavol Breslik’s vocal equipment shades similarly light, and one can easily imagine a more heroic tenor in the role. But the very ingenuousness of his sound makes him a convincing seducer. He shows us how, despite the infernal circumstances, the maiden can hear her sweet lover in the specter’s blandishments. The voice itself betrays some moments of unsteadiness toward the beginning, but it gathers focus throughout the proceedings—a result, no doubt, of the live performance—becoming marvelously fresh and free for the work’s climax. Adam Plachetka uses his lyric but dark-tinged bass-baritone to assert himself at the center of the performance: the narrator becomes the all-seeing presence who draws us into the cantata’s fantastic realm. “

“… [Meister] tends to emphasise the lyrical aspects of Dvorák’s score. But there are shapely solo contributions from the ORF orchestra, and certainly some very fine expressive singing from soprano Simona Šaturová as the girl and tenor Pavol Breslik as the spectre.”

“… Meister, one of Germany’s rising conductors, makes a strong case for it with his Viennese forces and Slovakian and Czech soloists. Simona Saturova is steely, if occasionally unsteady, as the distraught Bride, Pavol Breslik’s lyric tenor expands into the Spectre’s strenuous music, and Adam Plachetka...is an exemplary narrator, leading the commentating chorus”

“… This is really a fine performance in which the soloists’ voices sound especially well cast for their roles. The drama is palpable, the singing quite stunning, and the orchestral playing visceral in its impact.”

“…The RSO Wien shows itself off splendidly under Paris-born Bertrand de Billy. The three singers communicate a variety of shifting moods, nearly always maintaining beautiful firm tone—no barking or shouting. The roles of husband and wife in this marvellously wordy opera are taken by native German-speakers: Heidi Brunner and Wolfgang Koch. The American tenor Charles Reid offers a no-less-persuasive reading of the interloping lover, Guido Bardi. Reid performed at the Met for nine seasons. I recommend this astonishing work—dramatically taut but emotionally expansive, not least in the orchestral underscoring—to anybody who responds well to the operas of such composers as Debussy, Mascagni, Richard Strauss, Janacek, Bartok, Korngold, and Hindemith. “

“With some very good singing and passionate playing by the ORF Orchestra under the baton of Bertrand de Billy, Zemlinsky’s short opera A Florentine Tragedy after Oscar Wilde’s unfinished play gets a performance with plenty of feeling.”  *****

“… [Botha] gives what is mostly a fine account of the role of Giorgetta’s young lover Luigi, his tone vital and with a healthy ring at the top of the voice; but at times there is a suggestion of containment…But the real stars of the disc are the high-quality orchestra, which brings both definition and rich, subtle tonal colours to the score, and the conductor Bertrand de Billy, whose sense of atmosphere and line allow him to convey with conviction the ebb and flow of Puccini’s concentrated masterpiece.”

“… an impressive display of vocalism, with good work from the supporting cast …”

“… Bertrand De Billy leads a spirited, well-paced account. He never allows the pace to flag, though he allows time for the quieter moments to unfold so the moments of greater tension are that much more effective. Elsa van den Heever has had quite a bit of success at the Met among other places in the last five years, appearing as the vindictive Queen Elizabeth in Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda and a soaring Chrysothemis in the revival of Strauss’s Elektra. Her voice may not be ideally Italianate for this music, yet she sings strongly and securely with an excellent top (a must for Puccini sopranos). She may not be as specific in her choices as Renata Scotto, but she creates a vivid character.”