Ernestine Schumann-Heink

with Herbert Witherspoon

"Great artist, great woman ... by the end of this excellent selection of her recordings the special quality of her voice and artistry and of the woman herself could hardly leave the listener unmoved despite the great gap of time. Everything on these records has imagination and a loving commitment brought to it ... perhaps I may quote a sentence from a letter I received recently from the States: "I remember her voice just as it sounds on the CD". The writer was Schumann-Heink's youngest grand-daughter, who heard her daily, still practising scales and exercises, and who played the piano for her to sing, probably for the last time, two days before she went into hospital and a fortnight before her death."

John B. Steane, Gramophone