| | Tchaikovsky Iolanta and Rossini The Silken Ladder; 5 November 2001, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London (Site not responding. Last check: ) |
 | | At the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the tried and proven 'double bill' team of Clive Timms conducting and Stephen Medcalf directing did as well as could be with the Rossini in English, and sensationally well with Tchaikovsky in Russian. |
 | | The music is saturated and sonorous, its scoring very different from either Eugene Onegin or Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades), the orchestral sections down in the pit supporting each other and blending in a rich tone quality which carried the impressive cast, soloists and chorus alike on a wave of intoxicating lyricism. |
 | | There was an inescapable feeling that the Guildhall student singers were involved in something special, and that also comes across with the timely and serendipitous receipt from Select of CPO's Iolanta, recorded from live performances at the ECOV Festival in Ghent, mounted there to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Tchaikovsky's death. |
| www.musicweb-international.com /SandH/2001/Nov01/iolanta.htm (520 words) |