Reviews

Quite aside from the subtlety of her phrasing and interpretation, Troupová’s voice has that rare quality that makes it sound as if the top were limitless. Although she does no go into alt, her high range is so pure, clean and open that it sounds as if she could easily soar into the soprano stratosphere any time she wanted to, and this is her greatest asset as a singer.

Lynn René Bayley, THE ART MUSIC LOUNGE, An Online Journal of Jazz and Classical Music, 14. 10. 2021.

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Czech soprano Irena Troupová, who began her career as an early-music specialist, is a gratifyingly clear exponent of these challenging, grippingly individual songs. They demand complete musical and intonational assurance, which she provides in abundance. She’s comfortable with the angular intervallic leaps of “Aus dem Häuschen in den Garten,” another Steffen verse, and a song such as “Sonnenuntergang,” with its treacherously high middle section, could easily have sounded shrill in the hands of an artist with less vocal control. Troupová even sounds right at home with the Drei Jiddische Lieder, the standout of which is “A Mejdel in die Johren,” with its mix of tragedy, reproach and humor.

Joshua Rosenblum, operanews.com, March 2016.

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Troupová-Wilke is entirely at ease with the demands of all of the songs on this recording. One clearly cannot escape those wide leaps and chromatic intervals, but she sings them with a rhetoric than makes them sound perfectly natural. Dušek is, for the most part, a supporting accompanist; but every now and then Ullmann provides him with a passage that advances into the foreground. Hopefully this album will encourage more soprano vocalists to explore this highly engaging repertoire.

Stephen Smoliar, The Examiner, 28. 09. 2015

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