Wozzeck | Staatsoper, Vienna | March 2013

“Anne Schwanewilms is the phenomenal Marie, with the appropriate vocal sound for the role, and moving in the Bible-reading scene.”

Die Presse, March 26, 2013

“Anne Schwanewilms was an equally fabulous Marie, characterised by her heartfelt warmth and understanding of Wozzeck but unable to resist  the Drum Major’s power. She makes Marie’s desperate admission of guilt in the third act entirely plausible, and her voice combines expressiveness with emotionality.”

Oesterreichisches Nachrichten, March 26, 2013

“Powerful, energetic, with a suggestion of brittle standoffishness, is (Anne Schwanewilms’s) soldier-loving Marie.”

Der Standard, March 26, 2013

“Anne Schwanewilms possesses a light, lyrical voice, which is not particularly large. But with all her potential she still makes a very impressive Marie. Both singers (Anne Schwanewilms and Simon Keenlyside) were truly spellbinding.”

Der neue Merkur, March 25, 2013

“With her penetrating timbre, Anne Schwanewilms joins the luckless Wozzeck on the boards of the Ring as the not so chaste Marie. Modest at the start, she steadily lifts her performance into a piercing, genuine despair.”

Wiener Zeitung, March 25, 2013

Wozzeck | Jones Hall, Houston | March 2013

“Low voices often have trouble cutting through; higher ones have an easier time. Anne Schwanewilms, as Marie, certainly demonstrated that. Her bright, clear sound had a purity that helped make Marie – who repents of her sins in one of the story’s most powerful scenes – even more sympathetic. She ranged easily from tenderness to laser-beam brilliance, and I never noticed the orchestra overwhelming her.”

Chron, March 2 2013

“Schwanewilms, a lusty Marie, sings with crystalline purity and steely force like a young Birgit Nilsson. She galvanized the stage, radiantly cooing her lullaby to her baby boy, taunting the Drum Major with smoldering sexiness, or nervously confronting Wozzeck with a sad premonition of what is to be. She was a presence to be dealt with.”

Houston Press/Art Attack, March 2 2013

Die Frau ohne Schatten | Concertgebouw, Amsterdam | February 2013

‘Good as her colleagues were, whenever Anne Schwanewilms stood on stage one couldn’t take one’s eyes off her. Wrapped in a near-mystical kind of magic, she sang with unerring brilliance. In the second and third acts, her presence was incomparable. When she spoke her decisive ‘Ich will nicht!’ you could have heard a pin drop in the Concertgebouw.’

Operamagazine, Francois van Anker, 18.02.2013

‘(Schwanewilms’s) Empress is in the role’s lyrical tradition, but its dramatic side is in no way neglected. In the great scene where she renounces the shadow she succeeds in finding accents of a tragic magnitude and in the closing ‘Aus unseren Taten’ she truly provoked goose pimples.’

OperaClick, Edoardo Saccenti, 21.02.2013

‘Anne Schwanewilms as the Empress is majestic in both voice and appearance…herclosing monologue is exceptionally awe-inspiring.’

De Telegraaf, Eddie Vetter, 18.02.2013

‘In the title role, Anne Schwanewilms was sovereign, with exceptionally long, sustained tone, however deep in meditation..’

NRC Handelsblatt, Floris Dun, 18.02.2013

‘The singers cast as the imperial couple, tenor Torsten Kerl and soprano Anne Schwanewilms, both fully confirmed their brilliant reputations as leaders in their fields.’

De Volkskrant, Biella Luttmer, 18.02.2013

Tannhäuser | Staatsoper. Munich | September 2012

“Far more agile and clear, on the other hand, was the incomparable and vocally tremendous Elisabeth of Anne Schwanewilms…”

Munchner Merker

“One is far more easily seduced by the vocal magic of Anne Schwanewilms, who makes a magnificent Elisabeth, with a voice suspended and piched very high, a register where she is totally at her ease. She understands how to animate all the nuances of Elisabeth’s interior life: the affection, the love that forgives, the compassion, intelligence and spirituality which contest the sorrows of a woman so unjustly abandoned.”

Paperblog.fr

“Anne Schwanewilms’ Elisabeth was received with wild enthusiasm. Rarely has the Greeting sounded so effortless or the Prayer so intense.”

Der Neue Merker

Liederabend | Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh | August 2012

“The star of Anne Schwanewilms has been on a continual rise recently, and this morning proved that the reputation is justified…Hers is a very special voice, a remarkably complete soprano. The tone is rich and full, with a beautifully ripe top…I found it a thrilling voice to listen to; sumptuous and opulent with a quality of luxury…The breathless (or sometimes breathy) excitement to Schwanewilms’ use of words distinguished her as a true sound painter, using tone and diction to inhabit the world of the songs. This was a well planned, beautifully realised recital from two artists who came together as complementary halves to make a wonderful morning of song.”
www.seenandheard-international.com/2012/08/26/eif-17

“…beautifully delivered…characterising Debussy’s luscious Proses lyriques vividly with a sweetness of tone that could suddenly evaporate into a breathy nothingness, and a warm, narrow vibrato…And in conveying the meaning and emotion of her often dramatic songs, her voice was everything…spellbinding. She turned Richard Strauss’s Ach, was Kummer, Qual und Schmerzen, with its humming interjections concealing a spurned love, into a compelling opera scena, and her three closing fairytale songs by Wolf were thrilling.”
The Scotsman, August 27, 2012

“German lyric soprano Anne Schwanewilms…a consummate Straussian – her portrait of the Marschallin is the most stirring I’ve seen…She blossomed in songs by Hugo Wolf. She made Verborgenheit and effortlessly tender lullaby, Im Fruhling a lilting, loving ballad, and later sang Das Verlassene Magdlein with a heart-rending simplicity. She was at her most relaxed in coquettish mode in the silly ‘hm, hms’ of Strauss’s Ach, was Kummer and the three final playful numbers.”
The Herald, August 27, 2012

Ariadne auf Naxos | Staatsoper, Hamburg | May 2012

‘Anne Schwanewilms cut an elegant figure in a black Grecian gown as Ariadne, singing with delicate lyricism and nuanced cantabile.’

Opera

“Botha’s Bacchus is a chaste, otherwordly apparition and the almost ethereal soprano of Anne Schwanewilms, full of darker colours, matches him perfectly.”

Hamburger Abendblatt

“Anne Schwanewilms controls the colours of her voice in every shade. Whether as the stuck-up primadonna of the backstage Prologue, the solitary, death-obsessed figure on the island, or in the jubilation of awakening love, her Ariadne finds the right Strauss sound, floated on the breath.”

Kieler Nachrichten, KN online

“In the title role Anne Schwanewilms is highly successful in matching the conductor’s intimate approach and, with her characteristic, finely graded soprano, carries Ariadne’s death-wish forward into sound-worlds filled with suspense and intensified beauty.”

Kreiszeitung

“The role of Ariadne was fantastically well filled by the Strauss specialist Anne Schwanewilms, who brought to it tenderness, grieving, loneliness and a longing for death. A marvellously distilled portrait of Ariadne.”

www.dpa-info.com

Stabat Mater | Kennedy Center, Washington D.C. | March 2012

“Anne Schwanewilms’ lyric soprano voice, both in solo and ensemble moments, floated above the choral mix at times like an ethereal spirit…”

Washington Times

‘Soprano Anne Schwanewilms was a lambent presence, floating her high notes gracefully…’

Washington Post

‘Anne Schwanewilms’ soprano voice is extraordinarily powerful without any coarseness. Her singing was exquisite.’

www.seenandheard-international.com

Liederabend | Muziekgebouw, Amsterdam | March 2012

The 1001 tone colours of Schwanewilms

(…) The dress was a little Marschallin-esque, but when the soprano took the stage last Saturday, it became very clear soon that this was not the opera singer, but the “other” Schwanewilms, that of the song. (…)

The first three songs from Mahler’s ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’ were of the light genre. (…) Anne Schwanewilms chose a colourful, almost cabaret-like approach. “A play with many parts” was the subtitle of this evening. Mahler was followed by Franz Liszt’s songs on texts by Hugo, Schiller and Heine: a very different tonal language. (…). From the subtle musicality of Mahler we came to unadulterated drama in Liszt’s ‘The Hunter of theAlps’, a mini-opera for soprano and piano. In the story of the ‘Lorelei’ (Liszt / Heine), everything came together before the interval: surefire singing, the beauty of sound and well apportioned drama. (…)

The emphasis shifted from humorous to ironic with the ‘Wunderhorn’ songs after the break. Musically this was even more challenging and enabled the singer not only to show her power of style and expression but also her absolute accuracy in the vocal heights. (…) Vigorous heights, delicate tone even in long held notes: Schwanewilms gave the 1001 tone colours with a fascinating combination of technique and musicality. (…)

Accompanist Charles Spencer had a nearly independent role, musically. Mahler’s songs are at times more like a double concerto for piano and vocals. The extended intro of ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’, with the allure of a piano sonata, gave Spencer every chance to show his ability. (…)

With the five Rückert-Lieder, the evening ended. Gone was the cabaret, here we heard spirituality and the central questions of life in text and music.” (…)

Francois van den Anker, 5 March 2012

Liederabend | Wigmore Hall, London | December 2011

Combining innate musicianship and superb technique, Anne Schwanewilms showed once again that she can run the emotional gamut from light-hearted joy to deep anguish in this flawless performance with pianist, Charles Spencer.

“The songs from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn offered Schwanewilms the opportunity to demonstrate a great range of characterisation and dramatic situation, embracing intimacy and exuberance. (…) An intense and impassioned setting of Heine’s ‘Loreley’ brought the Lisztian sequence to a close, and enabled Schwanewilms once again to demonstrate her consummately controlled delivery of narrative. (…) The power and precision of Schwanewilms’s climactic high notes in the first part  (of ‘Scheiden and Meiden’) contrasted with the final farewells, ‘Ade! Ade!’, which she delivered in a loving, almost vulnerable whisper.

(In ‘Lob des hohen Verstandes’ (‘Praise of high intellect’), the cuckoo and nightingale compete to be) the prize songster in a musical contest adjudicated by a donkey. Schwanewilms relished the individual ‘voices’ given to each ‘character’, and concluded with an alarmingly realistic ass’s bray! After the gentle ‘Rheinlegendchen’ (‘Little Rhine Legend’), in which the atmospheric rocking of the piano accompaniment perfectly captured the lapping waters as they flow timelessly to the ocean, in the final song from the sequence, ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’(‘Where the splendid trumpets sound’) Schwanewilms displayed her lustrous, rich tone to full effect, signifying a transition from the whimsical naivety of Mahler’s early songs to the complex emotional profundities of the composer’s five Rückert Lieder.

Here, Schwanewilms and her accompanist rose to majestic heights of musicianship. The contemplative intimacy of ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’ (‘If you love for beauty’) was particularly stunning. Schwanewilms can produce an effortless, floating line, spinning out a high thread of sound, endlessly and ethereally until, almost weightlessly, the thrillingly tender pianissimo disperses into the air. She balances eloquence and grace with deep affective insight, as was supremely apparent in a spell-binding rendition of ‘Um Mitternacht’ (‘At midnight’). Here, the sustained focus of her lower range was in evidence, the controlled and crafted phrases indicating the valiant endurance of the protagonist. The final song, ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ (‘I am lost to the world’) probed expressive depths, closing with a spine-chilling piano coda; the long silence which subsequently embraced performers and audience alike was a testament to the epic scale of the emotions evoked and communicated.

Schwanewilms seems to have it all: unfailingly precise intonation, a polished, gleaming sound, almost superhuman breath control. She also has considerable stage presence and self-assurance: utterly in command of the voice and the material, she revealed a profound understanding of these songs while retaining a sense of freshness and spontaneity. The communication between singer and pianist, and with the audience, was sincere and generous. No wonder the applause was rapturous.”

Claire Seymour, operatoday