The complete recitals on Warner Classics
Christa Ludwig
Keywords
Reviews (6)
Presto classical
d. 26. Oct. 2018
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Katherine Cooper
d. 26. Oct. 2018
"Recording of the week: The three Wunderhorn songs are the highlight of the album for me, though I suspect that they're also the tracks which will really polarise listeners: this is where Bostridge pushes the voice to its absolute limits, flattening the tone and leaving high notes exposed and raw as Mahler's terrified little drummer-boy and mortally wounded soldier live out their final, agonising moments ... Like the album as a whole, it's by no means an easy listen - but nor should it be".
The observer
d. 11. Nov. 2018
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Stephen Pritchard
d. 11. Nov. 2018
"Putting together a song recital to mark today's Armistice centenary is no easy task - few art songs came directly from the horrors of the trenches - but the work of two composers killed in the conflict, one English, one German, finds its way on to a moving new release from tenor Ian Bostridge ... Butterworth's settings of AE Housman's A Shropshire Lad are well known and welcome here, but not so familiar is Rudi Stephan's startlingly sensuous Ich will dir singen ein Hohelied, a cycle of erotic love songs far more radical than Butterworth's nostalgic pastoralism".
BBC music magazine
2018 December
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Natasha Loges
2018 December
"This recital unites four figures closely associated with the World Wars ... Butterworth's setting from A Shropshire Lad are given a moving treatment ... Stephan's six songs ... are fascinating settings of poetry ... offering plenty of stylistic variety ... Ian Bostridge's singing is impressively mercurial, ranging from sweetly tender to harshly aggressive, with a surprising baritonal edge ... This recital offers a kaleidoscopic and thought-provoking raneg of responses to the pity, waste and horror of war".
Fono Forum
2018 November
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Bernd Feuchtner
2018 November
"CDs des Monats: George Butterworth, der mit seinem Zyklus "A Shropshire lad" Housmans Gedichte kongenial vertonte ... gestalten Bostridge unde Antonio Pappano meisterhaft aus. Das ist grosse Liedkunst, in der Todesahnung mancher Texte ebenso wie in iher jugendlich jubelnden Lebenslust ... Das sensibel und schön ausgestattete Album bietet ein bewegendes Erlebnis".
Diapason
2018 décembre
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Vincent Agrech
2018 décembre
The gramophone
2018 November
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Tim Ashley
2018 November
"Bostridge and Antonio Pappano are on superb form here, carefully responsive to style and mood, yet striving throughout for unsparing immediacy of expression ... Stephan's taxing vocal lines push Bostridge to his limits in places, though the atmosphere of sensual introversion is finely sustained ... The Wunderhorn songs find Bostridge at his most expressionist ... A disc of great power and intelligence, it's both haunting and undeniably strong".