More Information & Critical Reviews Andreas Scholl was born in Germany and his early musical training was with the Kiedricher Chorbuben choir. He later studied under Richard Levitt and René Jacobs at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. He has won numerous awards and prizes, including the prestigious ECHO Award for his composition for Deutsche Grammophon’s audio-book of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes and The Nightingale. Andreas has released a series of extraordinary solo recordings: the most recent being Wanderer – a disc of German Lied in partnership with pianist Tamar Halperin. Other notable releases include Bach cantatas with kammerorchesterbasel; O Solitude – an all-Purcell album with Accademia Bizantina, which won the 2012 BBC Music Magazine award; Arias for Senesino, Heroes – a disc of arias by Handel, Mozart, Hasse and Gluck; Robert Dowland’s A Musicall Banquet; Vivaldi Motets with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra; and Arcadia – a collection of rare and unpublished cantatas by composers from Rome’s Arcadian Circle. All of these recordings are released on Decca. ‘On one level Wanderer gives the listener abundant pleasure…Scholl’s diligent phrasing, purity of tone and lack of tricks bring…rewards…His piano partner, Tamar Halperin, is deft and poetic…Listen a little deeper, though, and limits to this pleasure emerge. Up at the top of Scholl’s register the more the voice seems trapped in a narrow pipe with no room for clear articulation of words or subtle changes of colour and weight.’ The Times, November 2012 ‘Scholl brings the same commitment to the Classical and Romantic repertory as he does to Purcell and Dowland. His priorities, as he states on the packaging, are ‘simplicity and sincerity’…As a recitalist, Scholl is less a story-teller than a weaver of spells, unleashing a fully conceived emotional state and sustaining it.’ Gramophone Magazine, January 2013 ‘Scholl is seeking out that place in German Lieder where folksong seems to transmute into art song: simplicity is all, and the Brahms songs are performed with virtually no interpretative gloss, allowing words to speak purely through the register and harmonic underlay of their setting.’ BBC Music Magazine, January 2013