Natalya Romaniw
Arion
★★★★☆
Thomas Adès
Janacek
★★★★☆
Reviewing a Guildhall School showcase ten years ago, I described Natalya Romaniw’s student voice as “robust”. As audiences at Britain’s opera houses are now fully aware, the vocal resources of this Swansea-born soprano of Ukrainian heritage have only increased in muscle. Lustre too.
Seconds into the first Rimsky-Korsakov song of her debut recording, you’re in her grip — seduced, awed, maybe even frightened by this voluptuously flowing, dark-toned voice, an ideal vessel for a recital called Arion: Voyage of a Slavic Soul. The excellent pianist, a perfect comrade-in-arms, is Lada Valesova.
Dedicated to the memory of Romaniw’s Ukrainian grandfather Dido, the album, perhaps inevitably with Slavic voyages, emphasises life’s sorrows rather than joys. It takes until