reviews

REVIEWS of 'Mr Abel's Fine Airs' (Gramophone Award 2008 & Diapason d'Or):

What a cornucopia of expression and nuance she achieves! From the passionate Adagio - where she seems to inhabit Abel's sensibilities to perfection ... through the tender rendering of the much loved arpeggiated prelude, to the vivacious concluding jig, this is outstanding artistry. Could even Abel have played these works better? Early Music Magazine
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..Charles Burney wrote at the time that Abel's Viola da Gamba seemed to breathe the notes, and I think he'd be similarly complimentary of Heinrich's playing, were he alive and critiquing today.. one of the contemporary sources says that Abel put 'light & shade' into every note. This elusive characteristic is abundant in Susanne Heinrich's honey-tone and directly sentimental playing. CD Review, BBC
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Abel by name, and certainly able in talent
Abel was one of the last masters of the viola da gamba, and in these unaccompanied pieces he reveals an intimate art which instantly makes sense of the affection and reverence in which he was held by his friends, they being the ones who got to hear him improvising at home in front of the fire and left touching accounts of his power to stir their emotions. “He was the Sterne of music” is how one described him, which is saying something.
Susanne Heinrich has chosen 24 solo gamba pieces from the 30 contained in a manuscript in the New York Public Library which surely represent the kind of music Abel played in those domestic musical occasions. Unencumbered by showy virtuosity, they are never less than supremely elegant, yet at their best exhibit profound sentiment in the word’s exquisite 18th-century sense. Four of the pieces are grouped together to make a sonata, but the others are free-standing and range from deeply felt adagios to lightly arpeggiated preludes, and from suave minuets to the occasional faintly rustic dance. Heinrich brings to them exactly the right blend of emotional involvement and earnest good taste, and finds pleasing resonance and smoothness in her instrument, such that even nearly 80 minutes of solo gamba never tires the ear. An unsuspected and atmospheric gem – I can almost hear the firewood crackling.
Lindsay Kemp - Gramophone, January 2008
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.. Abel wasn't always a buttoned up Georgian. He was famed for the extreme sensitivity with which he played his Adagios: the music historian Charles Burney often heard him play and said it was almost as if he was 'breathing' the notes. This is a description which Heinrich has taken very much to heart in works like the mercurial Adagio, WKO209, which puts one in mind of the gamba obbligatos of Bach.. Throughout, Heinrich succeeds triumphantly in crafting each piece individually - finding a special atmosphere for each work (and helped by discreetly reverberant acoustic). Although this is not a disc to take all in one sitting, it presents some utterly charming music that offers tantalizing glimpses of the private, intimate world of Georgian domestic music making, which was very nearly lost forever. Record Review, October 2007. Simon Heighes
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