<<  -- 3 --  Peter Dale    BEAUTIFULLY COLOURED

The sheer beauty of tone in Doufexis' voice carries her through everything [listen - track 5, 0:00-0:28]. And almost the same can be said of Oliver Widmer, [listen - track 20, 0:00-0:26] though in one song at least - Rose, Meer und Sonne (not a duffer by any stretch of critical misanthropy) - the stamina of his ardour over the span of ten stanzas is challenged.

Beautifully coloured, most intelligently but undemonstratively phrased and nuanced, not least in three duets they sing together [listen - track 23, 0:00-0:42], this record is a very great pleasure indeed. As if that weren't enough, Johnson's sleeve notes (and especially Richard Stokes' translations of the songs) deserve to be ranked as something of a literary event as well.

The recorded sound is first rate throughout.

To listen to the aural illustrations in this review, you may need to download RealNetworks' realplayer G2.