Reviews of the concert from which this recording was taken:

“John Tomlinson and Michelle DeYoung were vocally so commanding as to render “choreography” entirely superfluous. Tomlinson’s cavernous voice seemed to embody the very interior world of his castle - its sadness, darkness, emptiness - his Hungarian so vivid and expressive in itself that it became another sonority in Bartók’s aural palette. He was quite extraordinary. Musically stunning ...” The Arts Desk

“The part of Judith was well taken by Michelle DeYoung but it was the portrayal of Tomlinson that stole the show. At first predatory and prowling - no one can prowl like John Tomlinson - he visibly collapsed into himself as his secrets were exposed. And never was that magnificently gnarled tone put to better use.” The Evening Standard

While Piano Concerto No. 3 was dedicated to Bartók’s second wife, Bartók’s opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle was dedicated to his first wife, Márta Ziegler. The tale of Bluebeard and Judith has roots that date back to biblical times. The story took Bartók’s fancy when the Hungarian poet Béla Balázs read his version of it to Bartók in mid- 1910. Perhaps he saw its eternal message already being revealed in his domestic circumstance, for its autobiographical relevance is striking: a young wife wanting to know and love her mysterious, considerably older husband; an older husband, a loner, fearing that her youthful desire to know him and all his secrets would be their relationship’s undoing. Bartók’s setting of Balázs’s dramatic scene is an immensely powerful musical construction that spans the best part of an hour. The work is 2 3 one large sound arc, in which time and structure are measured by the successive openings of seven doors. Even in a fully staged version, there is virtually no stage action. This is a psychological drama, which is equally effective in concert or semi-staged performance. The opera is prefaced with a short enigmatic Prologue, which begins: ‘Once upon a time ... Where did this happen? Outside, or within? Ancient fable, what does it mean, Ladies and gentlemen? The song goes on, You look at me, my eyes are on you. The curtain of our eyelids is raised: Where is the stage: outside or within, Ladies and gentlemen?’ Bluebeard and Judith then appear in his gloomy castle – ‘empty, dark and forbidding like a cave hewn in the heart of solid rock’. Little by little, through her relentless coaxing, some of the secrets of his past are revealed.