Liszt: The Complete Songs Volume 1
Patrick Rucker
International Record Review
[Matthew Polenzani] remains ... an extraordinarily communicative Lieder singer, possessed of an agile and flexible voice of tremendous versatility. In the most intimiate of these settings, as well as in the quasi-operatic ones, Polenzani and Drake create performances that are at once thoughtful, richly atmospheric and never less than compelling.”
“Most of Liszt’s songs are big statements, usually described as virtuoso. But as with so much of his music, their difficulty in performance is to be found in their emotional and expressive extremes. The challenges are more than met here, with Polenzani doing things in songs such as Der Fischerknabe or Pace Non Trovo that you never thought were possible for a human voice, while Drake’s intensity is total and unswerving.”
— Tim Ashley, The Guardian UK, November 12, 2010