カリタ・マッティラ - ヘルシンキ・リサイタル2006 ［DVD+CD］

全てを圧する存在感、透き通るような声。メトの「サロメ」では40代後半…失礼！のボディを堂々と晒し（残念なことにカメラには収録されてません！）、聴衆の度肝を抜くことも厭わないチャーミングなソプラノ歌手、カリタ・マッティラ。この映像は、そんな彼女の素敵なリサイタルが収録されています。最初はデュパルクの歌曲から始め、サーリアホ、ラフマニノフそしてドヴォルザークという、何ともバラエティ豊かな選曲が見事。アンコールできっちり「お国もの」も用意しているという周到さ。あと、北欧ものをもう少し聴きたいという欲張りな方のために、既存のCDから良いとこどりをしたコンピレーション・アルバムがボーナスとして付いています。
ナクソス・ジャパン

Karita Mattila brings her dusky soprano to a strong and varied program of songs by French, Finnish, Russian, and Czech composers. Her performance of five songs by Duparc, including a particularly ravishing reading of L'Invitation au Voyage, is warm and sensual. Kaija Saariaho wrote Quatre Instants for Mattila, who premiered them in Paris at the Chatelet Theatre in 2003. Saariaho's deeply expressive settings of the poetry of Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf are largely atonal, but her vocal lines are lyrical and soaring, with accompaniments that underline the intense emotions of the texts, and Mattila sings them with the abandon of a woman in the throes of passion. Mattila is perhaps strongest in the Slavic repertoire; the five Rachmaninov songs fall ideally for her voice, and she fully invests herself in the intensity of their sentiments. Kakoje Stsastje, the final song of the set, is especially effective. Dvorak originally wrote his Gypsy Songs, Op. 55, to texts in German, but Mattila sings them in Czech, which seems better suited to their character than German. Mattila is especially free and uninhibited in these songs, and her rollicking enthusiasm is infectious. Pianist Martin Katz provides an unusually sensitive and nuanced accompaniment. The SACD recording, made at a live recital in Helsinki, has a few extraneous noises, but generally the sound is clean, with good balance between the performers.