HANDEL Radamisto, The English Concert, Harry Bicket, Barbican Hall, London
Elizabeth Watts outshone them both with her outstandingly communicative Tigrane, singing with bright conviction and conveying every emotional twist and turn with vivid clarity…showed how the repetitions in Handel’s arias can be made to feel dramatically essential.
Hugo Shirley, The Telegraph, 11 February, 2013
…the audience loved her for her gleaming singing as much as for her levity.
Erica Jeal, The Guardian, 11 February, 2013
With David Daniels, Luca Pisaroni and Elizabeth Watts in leading roles, it’s hard to imagine a better cast for Handel’s drama.
“This… was big, slow and overwhelming. The choral singing was wonderfully intense, and soloists Elizabeth Watts and Stéphane Degout were both outstanding. The long silence at its close, which no one dared to fracture with applause, was testament to its impact. ”
“a performance which mixes sumptuousness and refinement with impeccable poise and style… Watts is as authoritative and compelling a Bach soprano as you will find anywhere today… A most rewarding and satisfying disc in which an excellent band of players under a superb director are crowned by a voice of real magic.”
Marc Rochester, International Record Review, February 2011
and for Artaxerxes too…
“The Soldier tir’d… is resplendently delivered by Elizabeth Watts.”
Elizabeth has won a prestigious 2011 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. The Trust aims to help outstanding young musicians develop and sustain international careers with awards that fund tailor-made projects.
Elizabeth’s next two recordings will be released in January: a disc of Bach Cantatas and Arias with The English Concert on 31st January and a studio recording of her acclaimed performance of Mandane in Arne’s Artaxerxes on 24th January. Get pre-ordering!!!
Elizabeth will be performing Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater at the Royal Albert Hall on September 2nd. The concert will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 at 10pm and will be available for 7 days after on the BBC iPlayer.
Another rave review for Elizabeth, this time from Barry Millington in The Evening Standard for her concert of Bach at the Spitalfields Festival:
Things really caught fire with Jauchzet, however. Watts is a terrific communicator, her demeanour as engaging as her vocalism. Constantly varying both her tone and expression, she and Bennett threw off the semiquaver runs and top Cs with dazzling aplomb.
To cap it all, they offered as an encore Handel’s Eternal Source of Light Divine, in which soprano and trumpet unfolded lines of ravishing beauty, immaculately controlled.
The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 1st July at 7pm
“Elizabeth Watts gave an outstanding evening recital in St Laurence’s Church. Accompanied by Burnside, “I Sowed the Seeds of Love” moved from Gurney in Elizabethan mode to the mystic borderland with folksong inhabited by Rebecca Clarke and Vaughan Williams. Watts’s lustrous soprano is able to meet every expressive demand made of it, from the impassioned fear of Purcell’s The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation to her richly imagined re-creation of Elizabeth Maconchy’s take on Traherne in Sun, Moon and Stars.”
– Hilary Finch, The Times
"One of the most beautiful voices Britain has produced in a generation"
