Nominated for Best Classical Compendium (Grammys)

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Representing Death, Mark Stone’s imperious baritone quickly grabs our attention, while Christianne Stotijn’s flexible mezzo imaginatively portrays everyone else. Not short of its own musical echoes (Berg, Mahler), Totentanz has a virility and emotional resonance that suggests a work with a long life ahead. (The Times)

Baritone Mark Stone impersonates Death brilliantly. **** (The Daily Telegraph)

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The orchestral song cycle Totentanz from 2013, a setting of texts from a 14th-century German frieze showing Death inviting everyone from a pope to a young child to dance with him, seems more original than ever – a series of vivid, sometimes grotesque scenes, with baritone Mark Stone in superb form as Death and mezzo Christianne Stotijn portraying his successive victims. (The Guardian)

 

The singing of Mark Stone and Christianne Stotijn is incredible, each fully meeting the demands of what must be particularly exhausting music to sing. (The Classic Review)

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There is not much mercy on offer, either in the poem or from the infernal power of Adès’s orchestra. Mezzo Christianne Stotijn and baritone Mark Stone hold their own and are rewarded when the music sinks into a Mahlerian balm at the end. **** (Financial Times

 

The score – in which Mark Stone’s death lures Christianne Stotijn’s procession of 16 characters from pope to infant into the grave – has had something of a renaissance in the past few years, Adès conducting those soloists (as here) in performances around the world. But it can hardly have sounded as focused or as forensically brilliant as in Boston, with the same structural nous, sustained tension (tempos and volume are expertly ratcheted) and pronounced undertow. The latter comes surely from Adès’s understanding of his own use of cyclic structures, passacaglia and chord sequencing (a favourite one pops up in ‘Der Tod zum Kardinal’) but also from vivid characterisation and potent orchestral playing; the ferocity at the end of ‘Der Tod zum König’ is overwhelming. Christianne Stotijn dials down the lighting but not the intensity in ‘Der Küster’ and ‘Das Mädchen’, and even Mark Stone’s splendidly Mephistophelean Death offers her a warm hand in ‘Das Kind’, for which Adès invokes the ghost of a strophic song somewhere between Schubert and Mahler in lineage. (Gramophone)

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Totentanz (Dance of Death) sets an anonymous fifteenth-century German text “from drinking song to the inevitably of death” and mirrors Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in its journey; two singers further aid such a comparison, here Mark Stone (baritone) & Christianne Stotijn (mezzo), both impressive. Totentanz is terrific, notable, gripping throughout its thirty-five-minute continuous span, intense and dramatic, singers, orchestra and listeners allowed no respite until a communicative and ethereal beauty settles on the score halfway through, if without quashing the already-evident passion until things become skeletal in texture and accepting in outlook; musically rapturous. Great to have Totentanz recorded. (Classical Source)

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The vocal soloists Mark Stone and Christianne Stotijn present the poetically terrible text in the hall by means of hauntingly declamatory singing and cautionary intensity as if electrified. They need exemplary diction not least to be able to assert themselves over the onomatopoeic, gigantic, dense and powerful orchestra. “Oh woe, what will happen to me? Evil is destined for me. I was careless, thoughtless, and did my work badly. Must I pray to you, dear Lord, to forgive all my sins: oh lead me into eternal life!” the artisan ends the fifteenth appeal. Death assures the villainous artisan that his soul will have a hard time. The cycle really gets under your skin like a last judgment poured into sound. The BSO under the direction of the composer guarantees a luscious, luxuriant orchestral sound in an exciting, highly dramatic rendition. / Die Vokalsolisten Mark Stone und Christianne Stotijn stellen die poetisch schrecklichen Worte mittels eindringlich deklamatorischem Gesang und mahnender Intensität wie unter Starkstrom in den Raum. Die vorbildliche Diktion brauchen sie nicht zuletzt, um sich wiederum gegen das lautmalerisch eingesetzte, gigantisch dicht und mächtig aufspielende Orchester behaupten zu können. „Ach weh, was wird mit mir geschehen? Übles ist mir vorgesehen. Nachlässig war ich, unbedacht, und auch mein Handwerk schlecht gemacht. Muss ich dich beten, lieber Herr, all meine Sünden zu vergeben: o führe mich ins ew‘ge Leben!“ endet der Handwerker die fünfzehnte Beschwörung. Der Tod bescheinigt dem Schurken Handwerker, dass es die Seele schwer haben wird. Der Zyklus geht wie ein in Klang gegossenes Jüngstes Gericht wahrlich unter die Haut. Das BSO unter der Leitung des Komponisten ist Garant eines üppigen Orchesterluxusklangs und von spannungsvollen, hochdramatischen Wiedergaben. (Online Merker)