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One of the finest vocal instruments of the moment, the exquisite soprano of Finland’s Soile Isokoski roams amorously through the core repertoire in this outstanding anthology of solo arias entitled Scene d’amore. In eight outpourings of ardent, at times agonised love, Isokoski excels as Puccini’s Mimi, Bizet’s Micaela, Gounod’s Marguerite, Verdi’s Desdemona and Amelia Grimaldi. But perhaps the finest track flows from one of her latest stage roles, Tchaikovsky’s Tatyana, in a ‘Letter Song’ of such impassioned beauty as to melt the heart of the starchiest Onegin. –Anthony Holden, The Observer, 5 October 2008
Isokoski’s…beauty of line and tone – now with a dark, Slavonic glint – and her emotional commitment make the Letter Scene intensely moving. Elsewhere Isokoski is impassioned and anguished in Micaëla’s “rescue” aria from Carmen, while really caring for the curve of the glorious melody. She lightens her tone in a delightful, subtly coloured account of Mimì’s aria from La bohème, soaring thrillingly at the climax, and is true and touching in Liù’s farewell, with no hint of mawkishness. Amelia’s bittersweet aria from Simon Boccanegra is a model of delicate expression and fine-spun Verdian cantabile, slightly compromised by the orchestra’s over-emphatic evocation of the shimmering Mediterranean night. But in the main, Franck accompanies sensitively, nowhere more so than in Desdemona’s “Willow Song” and “Ave Maria”, where Isokoski’s poignant simplicity is shot through with foreboding, even terror. –Richard Wigmore, Classical CD of the Week, 20 September 2008
More than 20 years have passed since the Finnish soprano reached the final of the 1987 Cardiff (now BBC) Singer of the World competition. Since then, her meteoric rise as one of the outstanding Mozart and Richard Strauss sopranos of our day has masked the range of her operatic repertoire. Here, she tackles Mimi s Act One aria and one of her newest roles, Tatyana, in the letter scene from Yevgeny Onyegin, and it would be hard to think of any singer today who sings either more exquisitely. To these she adds Micaela from Carmen, Marguerite from Faust and two lyric roles to which she sounds ideally suited, Desdemona and Amelia Grimaldi from Simon Boccanegra. Is there a more beautiful soprano voice in opera today? Listening to her rapt, long-breathed phrasing of Come, in quest ora bruna, from Boccanegra, and Desdemona s Willow Song and Ave Maria, it s hard to think of one. –Hugh Canning, Sunday Times, 14th September, 2008
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