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With this superbly executed recital, Maltman leaps in a single bound into the front rank of Lieder interpreters today. There are so many deeply satisfying performances here…it is difficult to know which to alight on for special praise. A perfectly balanced recording adds to one’s pleasure in listening to this generously filled CD, which is up to the high standard of this series to date.
Editor’s...
This is a treasurable issue – generous in quality and quantity alike. As with the Hyperion Schubert Song edition one struggles for new ways of expressing one's admiration. Quite apart from the superb material, and the excellence of the performances, there is a booklet 122 pages long, packed with stimulating notes of great perception, accurate yet readable translations, small but clear...
There are so many delights to be found here, and the combination of a beautiful voice, Johnson’s superbly sensitive playing, and the intimacy of Hyperion’s benchmark recorded sound must surely propel this towards an awards ceremony or two. The Dichterliebe cycle is an intimate, deeply felt performance, winningly understated, and a great tribute to the intelligent musicality of both performers. It...
This disc by itself is enough to establish [Maltman] as one of the genre’s most important recent exponents. This is a probing, generous Dichterliebe, full of detail and thoroughly engrossing from beginning to end – comments that in fact apply to everything on this disc. This disc is a strong contender for my Want List this year, and is very highly recommended.
...recent years have seen attempts to escape from the Victorian massed-choir approach: to recapture its dramatic, brilliant and occasionally racy qualities the must have hit Handelian audiences between the eyes. And that's exactly what we got at Smith Square from the Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment - one of Europe's finest period-performance bands - and the small professional choir...
St John's Smith Square seemed an unlikely setting for anything but the most genteel of performances but conductor Stephen Layton managed to balance gentility with theatricality in Polyphony's annual Messiah. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment played superbly, with hail-storm percussiveness in But who may abide, veiled calm in the Pastoral Symphony, blunt aggression in the scourging, and...