Bravo!

The BBC Proms 2008 season opened on Friday at the Royal Albert Hall with a concert that included two works by Strauss: The Festival Overture, in which Wayne Marshall was the organ soloist, and Four Last Songs, sung by Christine Brewer. Congratulations to both for their fine performances.

Congratulations to Angela Denoke, who has just sung an outstanding and much celebrated Marschallin in 'Der Rosenkavalier' at the Bayerische Staatsoper in München for the Opernfestspiele 2008. She remains in Munich to sing 2 performances of Salome on July 26 and 29 2008.

Bravo to Alexander Shelley who had a huge success conducting the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra at the Roskilde Festival, Denmark's answer to Glastonbury. The local press wrote "Alexander Shelley is hugely charismatic, relishing every minute of performing to a young audience as his musicians play some of the most beautiful and stirring music the festival has ever heard."

Congratulations to mezzo soprano Cora Burggraaf who has been chosen as a "Rising Star" for the 2009 / 2010 ECHO series. As part of this series, Cora will sing recitals in Amsterdam, Athens, Baden-Baden, Barcelona, Birmingham, Brussels, Hamburg, Cologne, Luxembourg, Paris, Salzburg, Stockholm and Vienna.

Many congratulations to mezzo soprano Christianne Stotijn whose recording of Martin's Der Cornet for the MDG label has won the 2008 ECHO Klassiks Award.

Another Askonas Artist who performed in Tchaikovsky's staged Eugene Onegin with the National Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Slatkin on June 14th and 16th was the mezzo Irina Tchistyakova. Singing the role of 'Larina' in what has been hailed as an "excellent" and "ideal" cast, Ms. Tchistyakova proved herself to possess a voice of the highest calibre. Being described as having a "...plumy, luscious sound...", critic Micaele Sparacino wrote that her performance was "...especially effective in the quartet that opens Act 1." Following this performance of "magic and fireworks", Ms. Tchistyakova will next appear in Alexander Nevsky with the Navarra Symphony Orchestra which will no doubt be just as magical an experience.

Bravo to Daniil Shtoda and Irina Mataeva to a stunning performance of Eugene Onegin. Critic Micaele Sparacino wrote: ”When one of the world’s most beloved opera scores is given an ideal cast, is played by one of America’s finest orchestras under the baton of one of the world’s greatest conductors, as it was last night, the result is nothing short of magic and fireworks. What a joy it was to hear Tschaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin given such lavish treatment. It was pure unadulterated luxury! It certainly would be difficult to imagine two more beautiful women with lovelier voices that mezzo Ekaterina Semenchuk and soprano Irina Mataeva as the sisters Olga and Tatiana. They were completely believable in their roles, both physically and vocally. Ms. Mataeva, on the other hand, was the perfect foil to her sister Olga. She radiated youth, shyness, awkwardness, passion, and the inexperience of a county girl living on the farm who has a teenage infatuation with a man she has just met. Her rendition of the famous Letter Scene was sung as well as I ever heard it done. Her voice has an exceptionally beautiful timbre that is always enticing to the ear. She has a beautiful piano voice and a full and penetrating forte voice, both of which she employed to great effect in the Letter Scene. Her final duet with Onegin was thrilling in its display of vocal passion and dramatic intensity.Tenor Daniil Shtoda has the ideal voice for Lensky. He is right in line with the classic examples of Koslovsky and Lemeshev […] his singing was most affecting. Mr. Shtoda was very moving in his singing of the famous aria “Kuda vy uda lilis”, for which the audience immediately rewarded him with a strong round of applause. The duel, which can be awkward dramatically in a concert setting, was delivered offstage in the manner of a Greek tragedy and worked perfectly.

Congratulations to Maxim Mironov, who has recently completed an extremely succesful revival of Italiana in Algeri at the Grand Theatre de Luxembourg. Critics were particularly complimentary about his voice and characterisation, with Dieter Lintz of the Tirerischer Volksfreund Newspaper saying "All expectations were more than fulfilled. Mironov is a classic 'Tenore di Grazia' [...] with a highly characteristic timbre. Never even for a second are you under the impression that he struggles with the enormously difficult coloraturas: he masters them easily." (Translation). Maxim's next engagement will be in London, where he will give a solo recital at St. johns Smith Square as part of the 'Rosenblatt Recitals' Series on June the 26th. He then goes on to perform in a further Italiana in Algeri in Naples at the Teatro di San Carlo, with a role which has proved to be highly successful for him.