Fiona Maddocks
The Observer
March 2014

Two new recordings, released within weeks, by top baritones performing Schubert's great winter's journey song cycle should deter no one from buying both. No household can have too many. While Jonas Kaufmann's (Sony) is febrile, emphatic, close to melodrama, Gerald Finley's is inward, poised, heartbreaking in holding back. The more quietude he brings to each song—as in the early sequence of Erstarrung (Numbness), Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree) and Wasserflut (Flood)—the more potent his reading. Julius Drake, accompanying, is equally lyrical, fluent, expressive. Neither lets the music shout. They respond minutely to the shifts from bright to dark, major to minor. The disc lends itself to repeated exploration, a bonus in itself with so familiar a work.

The Observer