Geraldine McGreevy
The discreet but authoritative Graham Johnson has masterminded a pleasing sequence of more than two dozen songs shared among eight singers. For my money, the soprano Geraldine McGreevy is the star of the enterprise. The way she adjusts her tone colour – indeed, her whole musical personality – between songs, is often remarkable..
The Independent (Fauré Songs, Vol. 2)
She has a beautiful voice, packed with tonal variety which enables her to float a line weightlessly or deliver it with considerable dramatic impact…one of her strengths, clearly, is her command of characterisation….
Michael Tumelty, The Herald (BBC Recital, Glasgow)
Geraldine McGreevy has one of the most lovely soprano voices of our younger generation, and in songs such as Silver, In the Highlands, Neglected moon!, The Rejected Lover, and Arrogant Poppies, she is ideal.
John Steane, Gramophone(Armstrong Gibbs Songs)
lyrical, imaginative … Geraldine McGreevy’s soprano voice is sweet and pure
Classic FM Magazine (Armstrong Gibbs Songs)
…the character of McGreevy’s soprano …. is a character which ideally incarnates both the tenderness and the inwardness of so many of these songs..
BBC Music (Wolf Goethe Lieder, Hyperion)
McGreevy’s soprano provided equal joy. Wolf’s setting of Die Spröde positively danced out of her larynx.
Geoff Brown, Times (International Songmakers at the Wigmore Hall)
Hyperion’s exemplary devotion to the art of the German lied continues with this fine recording of those settings of texts by Goethe suitable for the female voice. McGreevy ….. is a refined singer. She opens with a sensual Ganymed, setting the tone for her consistent relish throughout of Wolf’s chromatic harmonies and acute response to words….. In songs passionate and comic, savage and gentle, profound and lightweight, the pair give performances – and they seem like performances, not anodyne cuttings and pastings – that invariably hit the appropriate spot.
Stephen Pettitt, The Sunday Times (Wolf Goethe Lieder, Hyperion)
Clara Schumann’s Sechs Lieder aus ‘Jucunda’ [are] sung radiantly by McGreevy.
Hilary Finch, BBC Music Magazine (Hyperion, Schumann, Vol. 06)
McGreevy’s Lachen und Weinen is simply the best performance I know. Her sharply deliniated characterization places the protagonist somewhere between Rossini’s Italian girl and Wolf’s.
Eric Van Tassel, International Record Review (Hyperion Schubert Edition Volume 35)
Christopher Gould
Sentient, supportive and truly musical accompanists are rare blooms indeed – and this one is blossoming more than nicely.
Hilary Finch, The Times
[Lorraine Hunt Lieberson] sang them with due commitment; and Christopher Gould, her astute and supportive accompanist, enjoyed their eloquently variegated piano writing.
Hilary Finch, The Times
[Gould] accompanied this heartbreaking aria with playing of the proper dignity and nobility. Gould is very young to be at this level, but his elevation will not have come as a surprise to anyone who heard him accompanying one of the finalists in last year’s Wigmore Hall Song Competition, and his playing from this point on was highly sympathetic without being servile. This aria was perfection: deeply moving in expression – so much so that there were people openly weeping all around me. ..…Debussy’s Beau soir gave Gould the chance to reveal his elegant, languid playing…”
“A naturally enthusiastic audience brought them back for four encores, beginning with an exciting Erlkönig in which Gould thundered out those gruesome octaves as though possessed and Hunt Lieberson characterized every individual part with real drama, especially in the malevolent spirit’s ‘so brauch ich Gewalt.Melanie Eskenazi, www.musicweb-international.com
Foster-Williams was accompanied at the piano by Christopher Gould, whose performance and musical vigilance gave gravitas to the piece and showed the equal importance of the pianist to that of the singer. His sensitive and intelligent playing depicted neatly the many flourishes of Schubert’s score and Muller’s poems, such as the effects of nature, the harsh echo of the elements, rushing storms, howling icy winds, the water under the ice, ravens croaking and birds singing.
Paul Dalton, Opera Britannia
Duo
Few are those actively interested in discovering how new performers cope with an exceptionally difficult score as, say, the song cycle Of Challenge and of Love by Elliott Carter and the answer is that soprano Geraldine McGreevy and pianist Chris Gould fare so astonishingly well that one starts to think of the piece as native to the repertoire. McGreevy has enviably limpid diction, phrases with obvious intelligence, and has a top that is bell-like without being fragile……..McGreevy made them all [Nicholas Maw’s Six Interiors] compelling.
Paul Driver, Sunday Times (Park Lane Group)
