“Starry musical soirée finds Kožená and Rattle at their most relaxed.” ****

Nominee in Assorted Programs award category

“… All the works on this imaginatively planned and beautifully recorded SACD, entitled ‘Soirée’, were composed in the 19th and 20th centuries, some of them fairly unfamiliar or rarely performed…The accompaniments are provided not only by Kožená’s husband Sir Simon Rattle, here making his debut, on disc, as a pianist, but also from six ‘friends’ – four string players drawn from Berlin’s finest orchestras plus flautist Kaspar Zehnder and Andrew Marriner, the recently retired Principal Clarinet of the LSO. With such a distinguished ‘supporting cast’ of musicians hopes run high for a most stimulating recital and this is exactly what it proves to be. The stylistic variety of the music demands a considerable degree of vocal flexibility and Magdalena Kožená is never wanting in that aspect of these performances…T he 5.0 multi-channel DSD recording has captured all the nuances of the performances in a warm yet intimate acoustic. Magdelena Kožená’s. distinctive vocal timbre and fine musicianship could hardly be better showcased than on this disc. There can be little doubt that her many admirers will be delighted with the performances on this bold and wide-ranging song collection.” 

“… Kožená is very much at home in this repertoire. Her beautifully produced, glowing tone absorbingly catches the predominantly fleeting moods of these parlour songs. She is accompanied by a mix of seven instrumentalists, whose playing is first-rate; that includes Rattle in his recording debut as a pianist. Soirée was not recorded in the Rattle household but under studio conditions, using the renowned acoustics of Meistersaal, Berlin. The sound engineers for Pentatone provide remarkable clarity and satisfying balance on this hybrid SACD (I reviewed it on my standard player)… Magdalena Kožená is at her most engaging in this exquisitely performed chamber collection of songs.”