"Roocroft is always a committed performer and even if she’s not at home in the French language or with the demands of Strauss, she always brings a sense of the dramatic to everything she sings. Together with Malcolm Martineau - an intelligent and sensitive accompanist – she’s done a terrific job on this recital." **** 

"Always a pleasure to hear Roocroft’s warmly textured soprano, backed by Malcolm Martineau’s sensitive piano, though this tasteful recital doesn’t do her full justice. In Debussy her pronunciation isn’t idiomatic, and traces of vibrato seem out of place, though her Strauss is more convincing. Tchaikovsky’s songs of the lonely heart prove much the best: seriously sad, very beautiful."

"He may get the title track - and deservedly so, given the heart-wrenching sincerity with which the delightful Amanda Roocroft delivers it - but Tchaikovsky shares the laurels on this debut song recital disc with half a dozen works each by Debussy and Strauss, all sung in their original language. After a career of somewhat mixed fortunes, this fine British soprano is back at her best, as especially evidenced by Debussy’s ’Cinq Poemes de Baudelaire’ and some beautifully atmospheric Strauss. The Tchaikovsky selection is downbeat but expertly judged." 

"Tchaikovsky admitted he could not write well for any scenario with which he did not strongly identify, and the same is true for many interpreters: you need to have experienced life, its sadness as well as its joy, to create the longing and the suffering embedded within his songs. In every note and word she utters on this CD, amazingly the first recital disc this much-loved English soprano has recorded, Roocroft convinces us that she has loved and longed as deeply as poet and composer. The six songs in her opening group of Tchaikovsky are unashamedly romantic, often concerned with an ideal happiness never experienced as much as with nostalgia for happiness past. Then come Debussy’s Cinq poemes de Baudelaire, illuminated by Roocroft’s peachy soprano and Malcolm Martineau’s beautifully dappled accompaniments. The final seven are all Strauss favourites: Roocroft communicates as easily in German as in French and Russian, the voice soaring freely and radiating inner beauty." ***** 

"What a difference intelligent hard work can make. The strong, bright soprano with the gleaming middle register on this disc hardly sounds like the same Amanda Roocroft who made her over-ambitious, plums-in-the-mouth EMI debut back in the early 1990s. There was all the difference in the world, too, between her heartfelt, text-aware Tatyana at Covent Garden and the relatively insipid heroine of the Welsh National Onegin only a few seasons before. Happily, her Tchaikovsky here hits the same best form, with long lines beautifully supported by Malcolm Martineau in the ineffable Cradle Song. True, the colour is the same throughout – a handsome voice like this needs unflagging support – and Roocroft may not plumb the well of loneliness so singularly as an interpreter like mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina does in ‘Once again, alone’, but she brings an almost unbearable intensity to the refrains of ‘To forget so soon’. There’s nothing wispy about her Debussy, the large-scale ambition of ‘Le balcon’ matched by the splendid scope of Richard Strauss’s ‘Befreit’ and ‘Ruhe, meine Seele’. ‘Cäcilie’ might best have been avoided as it exposes her sometimes effortful top; the recording, which otherwise loves her voice, turns the sound discreetly to the wall at such moments. Still, despite the overall rating there are certainly some five-star performances here – and Strauss’s relatively unfamiliar ‘Glückes genug’ hints that she may make an Arabella of ideal candour and dignity."

A warm voice and an involved accompanist grace this enjoyable recital

It is now 13 years since Amanda Roocroft recorded two operatic recitals that I found so difficult to recommend, the first on account of deficiencies (as I considered) of expressiveness, the second because of a deterioration of vocal quality. Since then I have heard her several times in opera and concert work and not been reassured, though I have also heard and read many enthusiastic accounts by others. And now comes this song recital – which, in general, I find delightful. The voice is warm and steady, almost from first to last. Only on a few loud high notes – the high A in Tchaikovsky’s “Why?” is an example – does the raw edge obtrude. At times, as in “Befreit”, the evenness of tone is compromised by something that can hardly be called a tremolo yet the effect of which is tremulous. But much is quite lovely: in the Tchaikovsky group, for instance, the Lullaby, in Debussy “Le jet d’eau” (the third of the Baudelaire settings), and in Strauss the smiling “Glückes genug”.
Expressiveness is still limited. By all accounts, Roocroft has become a very good actress, and it may be that she has diverted her attention from vocal to visual expression. At any rate, not much pain finds its way into the voice in Tchaikovsky, while Strauss’s “Heimliche Aufforderung” needs an infusion of sensuality and “Cäcilie” an exultancy which it doesn’t quite get. The calmer and more tender emotions come most happily within her range. And this style of understatement suits the French repertoire best: the “douleur” of Debussy’s “Recueillement” is better served than the lonely heart in Tchaikovsky. In all three composers, Malcolm Martineau’s playing encourages a full involvement, and at all times voice and piano are well balanced in the recorded sound.