Michel Dalberto

“The youthful Stutzmann steps in where others have feared to tread. With her instinctive understanding of the intimate drama of Lieder she gives to this highly diverse collection the benefit of her keen diction and natural musicality. Her tone is dark and very individual, a really old-fashioned contralto, and none the worse for that… Stutzmann's grave utterance seems wholly appropriate and she catches perfectly the moving quality of the texts and Schumann's close identification with them. The recording has bags of presence and the balance between voice and piano is excellent.” Gramophone

“The free-flowing late 19th-century Romanticism of Ernest Chausson overflows with colour and opulence. And if any voice was destined to match this music, it was that of Jessye Norman, whose account of Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer has long been one of her most admired performances. The appropriately French sound of the Monte Carlo orchestra conveys [the] complex web of emotions [of the Poème d'Amour] in all its subtle shades, matching the gloriously refulgent tone of the American soprano herself.” The Telegraph, 12th July 2008