“Both singers respond magnificently to Korngold’s testing vocal lines”

BBC Music Magazine

“Not everyone warms to the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, but this excellent selection of songs from his Viennese days, with a couple of examples also dating from his Hollywood heyday, might convert even the sternest naysayer.”

The Gramophone, Best Discs of 2009

Opera Now Magazine, July 2009
**

Korngold’s Sonnett für Wien is, as Jessica Duchen’s outstanding sleeve notes tell us, a ‘eulogy to the lost world of pre-First World War Vienna’. William Dazeley steps up manfully to this defiant tribute, written after decades in Hollywood. For a searing, bittersweet taste of old Vienna, you have to wait for the second track, a setting of Christina Rossetti’s ‘Sterbelied’, poignantly handled by Sarah Connolly and Iain Burnside. This 30-song rollercoaster includes the expressionistic Op 18 songs, the exquisite Unvergänglichkeit set, and some Shakespeare settings from the Hollywood years. No one ever writes great Shakespeare songs, but ‘For the rain, it raineth every day’ is terrific fun ,and some virtuosic dynamic control from Connolly in the sparse earthy setting of Desdemona’s song is a highlight of a disc where the English settings suffer by comparison with the German ones. But for the excellent efforts of the performers, the disparity would be greater. Signum’s other recent song release, a showcase for English countertenor Tim Travers-Brown is a valuable resource for enthusiasts of the genre. The world premier recordings of Michael Howard’s The Painted Rose, and Three English Songs, are set along side Betty Roe’s Noble Numbers and some well-judged appropriations from Warlock and Howells.

BBC Music Magazine

This Korngold recital encompasses much the same territory as Dietrich Henschel’s Harmonia Mundi collection from 2002, bar that disc’s resuscitation of some of the composer’s juvenilia. Most of Korngold’s songs, though, date from his adulthood, and this new disc features seven of the published sets, from the Abshiedslieder of 1920 to the Hollywood-imbued Five Songs Op. 38 from the 1940s, as well as the single, nostalgic ‘Sonnett fur Wien’ of 1952, his last song.

Sarah Connolly and William Dazeley share the vocal honours, each taking possession of single sets of songs but also splitting works such as the Abschiedslieder between them. Both singers respond magnificently to Korngold’s testing vocal lines, with their wide leaps and need for solid legato. Connolly’s rich mezzo comes into its own here, the opening lines of ‘Mond, so gehst du wieder auf’ a case in point. Dazeley uses his tonal range to good effect, too, though he’s particularly successful in the quick-wittedness of the Songs of the Clown from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Iain Burnside accompanies with his customary insight.

Sonically, the singers’ voices project well, but Burnside’s piano sounds a bit muffled and the acoustic as a whole comes across as a little dry and impersonalized.

The Gramophone, Best Discs of 2009

Not everyone warms to the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, but this excellent selection of songs from his Viennese days, with a couple of examples also dating from his Hollywood heyday, might convert even the sternest naysayer. Iain Burnside accompanies Sarah Connolly and William Dazeley in the many moods of this complicated Wunderkind.