British critics on the Mariinsky label’s latest releases

The recording of Jules Massenet’s opera Don Quichotte, released by the Mariinsky label at the start of this month, was selected as Editor’s Choice by BBC Music Magazine in the category “opera recording of the month”, receiving lavish praise and a five-star rating. “Basso cantante Ferruccio Furlanetto,” who appeared in the title role, “attains a supreme combination of richness and softness in perfect French, while Valery Gergiev whips up the score more vigorously than his predecessors.” The review also focussed on the “dazzling mezzo-soprano Anna Kiknadze” in the role of Dulcinée. Don Quichotte drew rave reviews from other British publications as well, among them The Sunday Times, which called the recording a “sensitive approach to the delicate fragrance of Massenet’s language, and The Observer, the reviewer of which was “stunned” by Ferruccio Furlanetto’s performance and by Andrei Serov as Sancho Panza.

The label’s release of Piano Concerti Dmitry Shostakovich’s First and Second and Rodion Shchedrin’s Fifth Piano Concerto with Denis Matsuev was also awarded five stars by BBC Music Magazine. The disc was hailed as “one of the finest recordings of Denis Matsuev currently available” on which the “internationally acclaimed Rachmaninoff expert” performs “to the accompaniment of the magnificent playing of the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra under Valery Gergiev and the magnificent sound in SACD format.” Critic Calum MacDonald summarised that this recording is a “tasty morsel” for any collector of Russian music.